Roast Chicken

When I first went on the gluten free diet, four years ago, my husband and children were a little overwhelmed by some of my newfound recipes. We ate a lot of rice. Don’t get me wrong, I like rice, I’m thankful for rice, but when you are use to what my American raised family would call “real” food (pizza, macaroni, spaghetti, sandwiches), rice is…. well, it is rice. A world staple, a grain of great significance, but rice non-the-less and eaten mostly less by Americans where wheat is the mostly more grain.

Incidentally, when I tell people that I can’t eat wheat sometimes they say things like “but, you can eat rice!”, as if this fact alone makes up for not eating spaghetti noodles and Kaiser Rolls.  But, back to my original point, one day in the middle of rice medley with egg plant crusted chicken tofu (if you’re a GF survivor, I know you’ve tasted plenty of similar yukki stuff), one of my children told me that she had been commiserating with a friend at school. He had also been put on the rice casserole diet and he was tired of it too.  He told my daughter “I don’t get it, I mean, steak is gluten free!”  Hmmmm, steak is gluten free!

So, what else is already gluten free? Roast, chicken, eggs, milk, butter, bananas, oranges, apples, peas, carrots, broccoli, peanut butter, watermelon, whipping cream, rice… I decided to start looking around for recipes that were gluten free anyway (and/or could be with a small adjustment.)  It’s my Gluten Free Anyway Cookbook project.

I found today’s recipe in the food section of the Deseret News, years ago. It’s good, doesn’t contain wheat and as an added benefit is also rice free.

Roast Chicken

Ingredients:
1 Whole Chicken
1/2 Stick butter, softened
Salt and Freshly ground pepper
1 Lemon
Fresh Thyme or Rosemary
1 Garlic clove peeled and crushed

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Smear butter all over the chicken. Place chicken in a roasting pan, season with salt and pepper. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over it. Fill the cavity of the chicken with several sprigs of herbs, the garlic and the lemon halves.

Roast chicken for 15 minutes and then baste and reduce temperature to 375. Roast 30-45 more minutes, basting occasionally. The chicken should be golden brown all over, with crisp skin. Turn off the oven and let it sit with the door ajar for 15 minutes before carving to retain the juices in the meat and make it easier to carve.

Notes about this recipe: I’ve made it a dozen times and it’s good. No complaints from the family about the chicken.  Depending on the size of the chicken it can take longer to cook.  You want to make sure that the juices run clear but you don’t want to overcook it or it will be dry.  To baste I usually just open the door and squirt some more lemon juice over it.

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