Upside down herby roast chicken with potatoes
Upside down herby roast chicken with potatoes
And my #1 meal planning strategy for when I'm not feeling inspired
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There are times in our lives, all of our lives (yes, even those who cook food for a living, love to develop recipes, and live for a great meal), when cooking and meal planning for our families feels like a drag. Moments when inspiration runs short, time runs even shorter, and preparing food feels like a serious chore.
I know I’m lucky that for me these moments are far less common than average, but I still have my days, my weeks, and my months when there’s no food in the house and I don’t even know where to begin in crafting a grocery list because I don’t have any idea what we should be eating for dinner (or what I even want to eat for that matter).
Fortunately (for all of us), I’m also not one to stay in a bad feeling for long.
After the fourth or fifth time this uninspired feeling rolled around, I realized I needed a strategy to cope: a meal plan for when I don’t want to meal plan, a formula I can run on autopilot even if it’s boring and repetitive, a way to stay well-fed through the slumps.
Top of that list: roast chicken. My #1 meal planning strategy for when I'm not feeling inspired.
If you haven’t purchased and roasted a whole chicken before, I know what you might be thinking: um Lauren, you are crazy. That does not seem easy or simple or straightforward. That sounds fancy, sophisticated even, and if I don’t have energy for a regular meal how the heck will I have energy to pull off something as sophisticated as roasting a whole chicken?!
I understand completely. Really, I do. Because up until four years ago when our farm started selling chicken for a friend and I suddenly found myself with a freezer full of chicken, I had never purchased or cooked a whole chicken before either. I was more of skinless-boneless-chicken-breast-only-please kind of a person.
I thought preparing a whole bird would be hard, or confusing, or involve some degree of butchery I didn’t understand. I was afraid the bird would be dry and undercooked, unpalatable and inedible at the same time.
Then I found this recipe from Bon Appetit that said “no fail” in the title and called for 6 ingredients. I also “invested” $16 in a digital meat thermometer.
Suddenly, I realized what people who roast whole chickens have known for years: there is no meal easier, in the whole entire world, than a roast chicken.
Here are the steps:
Preheat the oven.
Remove chicken from the package.
Lay out on a washable (i.e. not wood) cutting board. If it’s wet, dry it slightly with a paper towel.
Remove giblets/organs if it has any (the ones from my friends don’t).
Season the bird inside and out with salt and pepper.
Place it in a cast-iron skillet or other roasting device.
Drizzle with oil or butter.
Roast until cooked through (your thermometer will tell you when).
Prepare a simple salad and/or maybe a grain while the chicken is roasting.
Devour. If you’re worried about carving (I was), by the time the breasts are cooked through, the wings and drumsticks will fall right off and the thighs and breast can just be sliced with a knife however you like. It doesn’t have to be elegant. It can even be shredded.
Literally, you season the bird and put it in the oven. That’s it. And then you have a hearty main event for your meal.
And if you can believe it, ease is just the beginning of why roast chicken tops my list of strategies for uninspired meal planning; the reason I love it so much is actually because, much like a roast, the day 1 meal I just described above (which we have now agreed takes almost no effort to prepare) will be the foundation of not only the meal you eat on day 1 but also meals you can enjoy on days 2-5.
Yes, that is correct. A roast chicken is a meal plan all on its own. 🤯
If you seek out 4-5 (or more) pound birds (as I always do), and you’re feeding 4 people for dinner that first night (which is average), you will have leftover meat. You can shred what’s left that evening (or the next day) and it will become the base for another meal, or another few meals.
Tacos, pot pie, chicken salad (like the creamy kind that goes onto buns), chicken for salads (like a green salad with shredded chicken on it), BBQ sandwiches, enchiladas, curries, soups: the list goes on and on. Shredded chicken is a god send, and you just made it yourself. Well really, your oven did it for you while you were hopefully doing something else.
AND THEN (yes there is more!), after you have eaten a roast chicken dinner on night 1 and shredded all the meat off the bird on night 2 for another meal (or set of meals), you can put the chicken carcass into a pot (or crock pot), cover it with water, season it with salt, add some aromatics if you feel fancy (I rarely do), and simmer it gently overnight (if it’s on the stove, keep it partially covered so it doesn’t lose too much liquid). Voila, day 3 chicken stock as a base for brothy noodles or risotto or something else.
There it is: my #1 meal planning strategy for when I'm not feeling inspired.
One chicken. 3-5 nights of meals that are simple to create and not at all boring or repetitive. If you aren’t already doing this, well, you should be.
And now, my friends, a recipe for a different variation on roast chicken. Because when you have been roasting chicken the exact same way for 3+ years, it feels okay to riff on things ever so slightly. Try it now, or whenever you are ready.
There’s nothing more difficult about this preparation from what I shared above. The main differences are that a) you have to harvest some herbs to put into the butter, b) you have to cube some potatoes to add during the roasting process (but then you have an immediate side dish), and c) you have to cook the bird upside down.
Yes, upside down.
This was an accidental trick I learned by (you guessed it) not paying attention and roasting the bird upside down, only to be shocked that it took less time, was less dry, and yielded way more crispy chicken skin (an important thing to his household). I since learned that there’s a whole cult following of people who believe this is the optimal way to roast a chicken. And honestly, I think I’m getting on board.
Enjoy my friends and happy chicken roasting/easier meal week to you!
-Lauren
P.S. Thank you to my dear friend Beth of Winterfell Acres for sponsoring this post and recipe!
Beth and her husband Travis are raising certified organic, pastured, heritage-breed chickens at their beautiful farm outside of Brooklyn, WI this year and will be selling them fresh this fall. You can order your birds and leave a deposit here!
Travis is also offering Chicken Butchery 101 Workshops on September 17, 24, 25, and October 1 for those looking to learn more about humane, on-farm chicken slaughter, evisceration, and processing. You can learn more about their farm and his chicken butchery classes on their website.
UPSIDE DOWN HERBY ROAST CHICKEN WITH POTATOES
Takes 1 hour, 45 minutes
Serves 4 (plus more meat)
1/4 cup butter
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon fresh sage (or 1 teaspoon dried)
4-5 pound whole chicken
1-1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pounds gold potatoes, cubed
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
In a small sauce pan, melt butter over low heat. Add rosemary, thyme, and sage. Let sit while you prepare the bird.
Place chicken on a washable cutting board. Remove giblets/organs if inside. Pay dry with a paper towel (it doesn’t need to be completely dry, just not visibly wet). Season inside and out with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Place in a 12-inch cast-iron skillet or other roasting pan. Pour butter over chicken slowly, allowing as much to coat the skin as possible. Drizzle with olive oil.
Roast for 35 minutes. Add potatoes directly around and under bird (wherever they fit) and roast until bird is cooked through (thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast reads 165 degrees), about 25-35 minutes more.
Let rest for 10 minutes and then carve/serve with potatoes.