What I Made for Dinner :: Roast Chicken a la The Pioneer Woman

Roast Chicken is on our dinner rotation pretty frequently (i.e., once a month or so). I don't often veer from my usual method, but even I get bored of that roast chicken occasionally. So, off to the Internet to find an alternative. Lately, when I'm googling new recipes, I always skim the Pioneer Woman's version of the dish because she tends to have quick and/or easy recipes. So far I've had pretty good results with them.

Her version is a lemony Roast Chicken, but because I was making this with what I had at home, it probably wasn't as lemony as hers. I served it with mashed potatoes and steamed cauliflower. Tonight ended up being a very pale dinner!

Modifications:

• I didn't have any rosemary so I used dried thyme instead.
• I only used one lemon because that's all I had. (I really need to find a way to have an indoor lemon tree.) After quartering the lemon, I actually salted and peppered them so some of the flavor would be imparted into the cavity; I've always found it a bit cumbersome to salt and pepper the inside of a chicken.
• I forgot to juice the lemon over the chicken before stuffing the cavity with the lemon wedges.
• I put some butter under the skin and my husband commented that it was more moist than my usual method.

Things to watch out for:

• Smoky oven! In the comments someone mentioned not having the oven so hot (425 degrees) for the whole cooking time, just the last 15 minutes or so to brown the skin. But they didn't mention what the temp should be instead. I would guess somewhere between 375 and 400.
• The butter didn't spread as easily as the Pioneer Woman's photos suggested. It was either because the skin wasn't dry enough so the butter slid right off; the chicken was still too cold and the butter hardened as it touched the chicken; or the butter wasn't soft enough, period. I ended up basting the chicken half an hour into baking with more butter because I didn't use all of the butter initially. But I really think you can get away with not using so much butter to begin with.

This roast chicken recipe is definitely a keeper. It's pretty easy to prepare and it's tasty! I love that the skin crisps up really nicely, at least on the top. I usually eat the dark meat, and the skin wasn't as crisp on the bottom of the chicken. I'm debating whether I should flip the chicken half way through baking, which is how I usually do it ...