The 34th recipe I made for the Cook the Book Fridays group using the Everyday Dorie cookbook by Dorie Greenspan is Herb-Butter Chicken, it can be found on page 122.
Ingredients: whole chicken, lemon, butter, herbs, scallions, salt, pepper, olive oil, stale bread, onion, bay leaf, wine (or water), and sherry vinegar. (I added some little tiny potatoes to the pot as Mark thinks every major meal should come with potatoes of some kind...it worked nicely as they had some of the chicken flavor to them which was tasty.)
We have cooked quite a few chickens over the years, and each one is slightly different, so it’s always fun to come across a new recipe and give it a try. This one was very easy, not too many ingredients, and cooked up nicely in the amount of time specified in the recipe (the photo in the book was a little darker skin than mine, but I tested it for temperature and mine was done at this stage so I took it out as I didn’t want it to get dry).
The most difficult part was getting the butter mixture up under the skin but even that wasn’t too time-consuming or difficult. I did put the slice of stale bread under the chicken while it roasted as suggested, despite my deep dislike of anything resembling wet bread. Mark said it soaked up the chicken juices and was a little crusty on the bottom so he enjoyed it…I passed on that part. One thing I did notice, was that since the bread was resting on the bottom of the pot and the chicken on the bread, there wasn’t really any color to the underside of the chicken. So maybe we just don’t look at that part. It was very moist and flavorful. I would make this again. The only thing I would change if I were taking a photo, is that she looks a bit risqué posed like this, I usually truss the chicken (always the legs for sure) so I wasn’t really fond of the look of it with her legs like that…the recipe and photo in the book showed the chicken untrussed, but next time, I’ll do that part my way. Definitely worth making whenever you want a roast chicken.
To see what others in the group made this week, click here, for the Cook the Book Fridays link. We don't publish recipes from the book here in deference to the author, but the author has been generous and you can find many of them online.