Roast Chicken

For dinner Tuesday, I roasted a chicken with a little help from this recipe for a marinade and this site for cooking time and temps.

ZOMG Tasty!

My modifications:

For the marinade, I used 4 Tbs. butter (which wasn't warm enough -- I should have melted it), some orange juice, a delicious horseradish, hemp and honey mustard, fresh rosemary, onion powder, red pepper flakes, freshly ground black pepper and some salt. Inside the cavity of the chicken I put two quartered clementines, six cloves of garlic, two shallots, and a sprig of rosemary (which I added afterwards so it was kinda shoved in there. :-P



I trussed the bird using this method and stuck it in a roasting pan surrounded by carrots and parsnips.



I also made a side dish of potatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper.



The verdict? OMG the tastiest, most moist chicken I have ever had. And not bad for the second chicken I've ever roasted! I think I will ALWAYS put citrus inside the bird as it made such a difference. One thing I would change up -- although the marinade was certainly fragrant, it didn't have enough spices. Apparently you have to really up the spices in order to taste them, as most of them burn off. Also, melting the butter and perhaps infusing the spices in it? I think that would be delicious.

Tasty Dinner

So yesterday, with $5 in my pocket from tips, I marched to the meat market, as Mister informed me that he wouldn't be bringing his car home, going to Whole Foods was out of the way, etc., etc. I returned with two steak-cut top round pieces. Oh beef, how I love you...

Since I've made the mistake of thinking of them as steak before, I figured I'd braise them or something, but that I'd at least get them marinating at first. So I put in apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, and pepper. [Mister was like "we had italian dressing?"]

After marinating for an hour or so, we got down to the nitty-gritty of figuring out what we were doing to this meat. Braising, awesome. Hmm, you have to sear it first...

We pull out the cast iron frying pan and Mister starts searing the sides while I prep the very sad looking parsnips and potatoes.

As we don't really have anything appropriate for the liquid to braise in, we decide upon water with bourbon, and some tasty spices, tucking little bits of parsnip, shallot and potato on the sides. We cover the pan, and put it in the oven at 250F (also making a dish of potatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper).

After about 2.5 hours, we pull the meat out, and it is beautiful. So we plop the veggies and the meat onto a plate, and Mister sets about making a glaze. (Note, the potatoes on their own were still in the oven, we added a bit more olive oil to the top, and then broiled them at 500F.)

Mister added some more bourbon, sugar, corn starch, and probably more spices and set about making the most delicious gravy ever. He also came to the conclusion that bourbon is a spice. :-P



Verdict? Freaking amazing. Would eat that every day if I could! (The amazingly crunchy, salty, tasty potatoes didn't hurt... :-P)