A Roasting of Chicken and Vegetables

The simplest food is usually the best.
This is some serious LOVE YOU food.
So EAT I say!

Ingredients:



1 Chicken
(whole)

Potatoes

Rutabaga

Carrots

Corn


Brussel Sprouts and Cabbage


Sweet Potato

(or a yam)

Green beans

These are what I happened to have in my frig,
Use vegetables you like.

Ah, and chicken broth.



Preparation:

Liberally salt and pepper the chicken.

The salt that falls into the bottom of the pan will season your vegetables.

I dig these little handy props for the chicken roasting,

roasts the bird evenly on all sides.
You can find them anywhere,
either one like this or one of those beer butt chicken holders.

I put my chicken in first because I want to give it a head start,
while I work on the vegetables.

Remember how we chopped up a potato?
Same thing here with the rutabaga, and yam. Cut both ends off.

Slice the skin off the sides

I like to chop them relatively small, they'd be overcooked
and nothing but mush if I put them in right away.

*Ack, let me say this also,you can make this dish in a crock pot,
you can substitute ham for the chicken,
you can cook this in a closed casserole dish.......doesn't really matter.



Chop the vegetables.
Leave the brussel sprouts whole.

Remove the cabbage core

Cut the cabbage in half.

V out the middle white core.

Hey! About the celery, don't throw out the hearts,
the leaves in the middle... there's a ton of flavor in those little things.

As for carrots, I leave the skin on.

I cut my corn into pieces, they'll cook a little faster.

You'll rarely see me use a food processor.



I love the slicing and dicing.
I like my hands on the food.

After giving the chicken a half hour start in the oven

drop the vegetables in the roasting pan.

Add enough chicken broth to almost cover them.

All the aromatics are going to flavor the chicken.
I can't begin to tell you how freakin good your house is going to smell.

I never pay attention to time.
I watch the chicken.

When I can move the legs, or the wing easily it's done.
(Roughly and hour, hour and a half if I had to guess)

Oh and this will make one hell of a pot of soup the next day.

Might look a little plain here,


but I don't really care.....
I was WAY too hungry to fuss with it. And I was losin daylight fast.
What it lacks in presentation it makes up for in taste.
.The chicken was so succulent, and the flavor imparted from all the aromatics...

It had flavor that's good enough for me.

DAY TWO



Best part of this dish is what happened today........soup.
Take the chicken meat off the bone, tear into small pieces
and add to soup, add more chicken stock, little salt and pepper.