I know I am probably boring you with such tedious recipes, recipes that everyone may know how to cook, but I do get a little carried away sometimes and I need to remember why I started this blog in the first place and thats recipes for my Children to be able to cook where ever they are in the World and who can resist the perfect roast chicken.

I remember when I left home at 19, I couldn’t cook at all and I thank my lucky stars that I had Jasmine to give me confidence and to introduce me to Italian food. I must admit whilst the Children were little I cooked to get by, but over the last 10 years my confidence has grown and I now cook because I just love food.

This recipe produces as the title says, ‘the perfect roast chicken’, it is moist, full of flavour, with a gorgeous crispy golden skin, I never roast chicken any other way now I have found this recipe and it works perfectly time and time again, just serve with your favourite vegetables, roast potatoes or how I really love it, with big fat chips and aioli, with a lemon wedge on the side, heaven, my perfect comfort food.

So I hope you enjoy my blog and I hope my Children enjoy cooking the recipes on here.

Roast Chicken

1 x approximately 1.6kg chicken, preferably free-range, organic or higher welfare
2 medium onions
2 carrots
2 sticks of celery
1 bulb of garlic
Olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 lemon
a small bunch of fresh thyme, rosemary, bay or sage, or a mixture, anything you can forage from your garden, or have lying around

To prepare your chicken :-

Take your chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before it goes into the oven

Preheat your oven to 240°C/475°F/gas 9

There’s no need to peel the vegetables – just give them a wash and roughly chop them

Break the garlic bulb into cloves, leaving them unpeeled

Pile all the veg and garlic into the middle of a large roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil

vegetables for roast chicken

Drizzle the chicken with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper, rubbing it all over the bird

Carefully prick the lemon all over, using the tip of a sharp knife (if you have a microwave, you could pop the lemon in these for 40 seconds at this point as this will really bring out the flavour)

Put the lemon inside the chicken’s cavity, with the bunch of herbs

chicken ready for the oven

To cook your chicken :-

Place the chicken on top of the vegetables in the roasting tray and put it into the preheated oven

Turn the heat down immediately to 200°C/400°F/gas 6 and cook the chicken for 1 hour and 20 minutes

If you’re doing roast potatoes and veggies, this is the time to crack on with them – get them into the oven for the last 45 minutes of cooking

Baste the chicken halfway through cooking and if the veg look dry, add a splash of water to the tray to stop them burning

When cooked, take the tray out of the oven and transfer the chicken to a board to rest for 15 minutes or so

Cover it with a layer of tinfoil and a tea towel and put aside. Now is the time to make your gravy

To carve your chicken :-

Remove any string from the chicken and take off the wings (break them up and add to your gravy for mega flavour)

Carefully cut down between the leg and the breast

Cut through the joint and pull the leg off

Repeat on the other side, then cut each leg between the thigh and the drumstick so you end up with four portions of dark meat

Place these on a serving platter

You should now have a clear space to carve the rest of your chicken

Angle the knife along the breastbone and carve one side off, then the other

When you get down to the fussy bits, just use your fingers to pull all the meat off, and turn the chicken over to get all the tasty, juicy bits from underneath

You should be left with a stripped carcass, and a platter full of lovely meat that you can serve with your piping hot gravy and gorgeous roast vegetables

Serve with http://dianastaveley.blogspot.com/2011/01/roast-potatoes-with-feta-rosemary.html, they are a match made in heaven.

Just a quick note here, this is a lovely Jamie Oliver recipe and the cooking guide lines are probably spot on, but I tend to follow his preparation instructions, but I cook to the time that is stated on the packaging the chicken came in, but as usual its up to you.