Haven't made a good roast for a while. For the first half of summer, I only roasted chicken breasts, without the skin. There are some down sides to eating healthy. Less or no butter, low sodium, low carb...low everything. The only food routine that I've kept up is to have my lemon "detox" drink. It's just simply lemon juice, sea salt and hot water. A nice balance of lemon juice and sea salt before going to bed or first thing when I wake up.
I've decided to make a good nice roast today but I still want to go towards that healthy route. Trim the excess fat off the chicken, so that you'll be left with nice clear juices from the chicken instead of the fat. At this point, you can try to massage some butter under the skin of the chicken. This will make the skin more crispy and flavoursome. Massage dried parsley, dried chilli flakes, sea salt, pepper and olive oil onto the chicken. What I'd like to do is to mix that up first, then massage it over the chicken. Marinating the chicken will also be fine but I'd rather not put the chicken back to the fridge once its down to room temperature.
Place the chicken breast side up on the roasting tray. It's good if you have one of those trays that has a wire rack to put the meat on so that the juices will drip down. Cover the chicken with al foil, or at least the breast part. Oven temp is 180C fan forced. After 30-40 minutes, remove the al foil, crank the oven temp up to 200C for another 15minutes. This will give your chicken that golden crispy look and makes you want to dig in! Once the chicken is cooked to perfection, take it out of the oven and loosely cover with al foil to rest it properly. 10-15minutes will be best.
Strain the pan juices. Add a dollop of butter and whisk into a thick but not too creamy consistency. Season to taste.
Crave the chicken. Remove the legs with the thigh still on. Slice the chicken breasts into your preferred thickness. I'd like them thin, so that I can have them on a sandwich with salad the next day.
Have your chicken with buttered veggies or potatoes done in whatever way you like.
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