February: Roast Chicken and Stock

The night my friend and I made Sunday dinner, we were both blown away by how cheap a whole roasting chicken was! Now we didn't get anything fancy, just your normal supermarket chicken, but it was still so cheap. What with being unemployed and all, I'm always looking for cheap recipe ideas that are also fun to make and yummy. Both of these fit the bill.

Roast Chicken
I also have to admit that this was not my most successful dish because I don't have an instant-read thermometer and may or may not have undercooked the chicken...but I fixed it!

-1 roasting chicken
-Olive oil
-4 or 5 lemons (depending on size--mine were little baby ones so I used more), 2 thinly sliced
-Several cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
-Salt n pepper
-Thyme and rosemary, chopped

-Preheat oven to 450
-Wash chicken and remove giblet thingys out of the cavity
-In a little bowl mix salt n pepper, herbs. Loosen chicken skin and shove the salt n pepper n herb mixture underneath and into the cavity
-Add garlic to skin and cavity, add whole lemons to inside and sliced lemons under skin
-Tie the legs together and place chicken on a roasting pan *Note: if you don't have string or twine, use thin strips of tinfoil--I was pretty proud of that trick
-Roast for about 20 min, or until breast seems nice and brown, then cover with tinfoil and return to oven
-Check the bird about 20-30 min later and stick an instant-read thermometer to test for done-ness.

*Note: if you're like me and don't have an instant-read thermometer and wait forever for your regular thermometer to work while it's slowly sliding out of the chicken, you might have a tiny problem of under cooking the chicken.

Here's how you fix it:
-Turn the oven to 375
-Cut up the chicken: take all the meat off the bone (and save the carcass for stock) in big pieces and place, lemons, garlic, and all in a deeper baking pan
-Add half a sliced onion, some more herb, and add a little bit of chicken stock if you had it or water--just enough to cover the pan. Put it back in the oven and roast until the chicken is actually done. This might take a bit but you can cover it to keep the moisture in too.

Stock:
-In a stock pot:
-1 chicken carcass
-Several garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
-1/2-3/4 of an onion, roughly chopped, skin on
-A few sprigs of rosemary
-1 carrot, roughly chopped
-1 stick celery, roughly chopped
-1 bay leaf
-Any other bits and pieces of veggies lying around
-Add enough water to just cover everything and bring to a boil
-Simmer without stirring for half an hour or so or until the liquid seems flavorful
-Strain and discard everything but the liquid
-Refrigerate and then skim off the fat the next day
-Use within 3 days or freeze