This is a must try for you whole chicken lovers. Now this recipe is not one of those quick meals, but offers a different way to roast that whole bird in the freezer. You can use any herb such as rosemary or tarragon, but I chose thyme. Not only is this a whole roasted chicken recipe, I am also including a sauce that has the AWESOME flavors from the bottom of the roasting pan!

Let’s cook!

Herb-Crusted Classic Roast Chicken

1 whole chicken

3 -4 tablespoons fresh herbs

1 cup chicken broth

1 lemon, zest and cut into quarters

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450.  In a small bowl add lemon zest and herbs.

Place the chicken, breast side up, on a large roasting pan. Rub the herbs and generous amount of salt and pepper over the chicken. Stuff the cavity with lemon wedge and whole herbs with stems (in this case the thyme).

Roast in the oven for 20 minutes.

Reduce the oven temperature to 400 and continue to roast until your meat thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone reads 170, about 40 minutes longer from when you reduced the temperature.

Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes befor you carve. Time to make the pan sauce. Pour the drippings from the pan into a sauce pan. Add the rest of the broth and bring to a boil and stir. Be sure that you added the bits from the  bottom of the roasting pan to the sauce pan. Cook until the sauce is slighty reduced which takes about the total time for the chicken to rest.

I made mashed potatoes and peas with this meal. Here is how I plated the dinner:

And here is the close-up:

So in total time this dinner takes just over an hour. I think I ate half the chicken and the sauce you can store in the freezer for the next time you have chicken.

Tomorrow I will post roasted tomato soup.

Happy Cooking!