Simple and Delicious Standard Sunday Dinner

Hello everybody, well, just a short post to say that I usually roast a chicken once a week, and I have several favorite ways of doing this. Lately I've been doing the recipe from Practical Paleo, which is delicious and which is featured in this photo. It includes citrus (I used oranges but you can do lemons) stuffed into the chicken cavity, as well as carrots and onions in the pan (I used purple carrots here as you can see). I also stuffed some garlic into the cavity as well as some fresh thyme. Oh, and most important, put a tablespoon of butter (or ghee) under the skin of each breast. The roasted chicken recipe in the cookbook The 24-Hour Chef has a good illustration of how to do this - it's super easy. During the latter half of cooking I added some chicken broth to the pan just because I was experimenting with seeing if it made things less dry. It would have been fine without it but was a nice variation. My favorite roasted chicken recipes are, in no order:

• Practical Paleo recipe (above)
• Mark Sisson's apple-stuffed roasted chicken with sweet potato chips (and definitely use bacon fat for this one)
• Tim Ferris's Haeriller Chicken recipe in 24-Hour Chef - but a note on this one, I can't cook a chicken on such high heat because it sets off all my smoke alarms (he has you cook the whole chicken at 450F the whole time), so I will often take his basic prep ideas and then cook it according to Mark Sisson's instructions, which are my favorite. He does 30 minutes at 425F and then turns down to 375F for the remainder, which for me turns out a perfectly crisp but not too dry chicken. 

I have also taken tips from Mark Bittman's recipes (his have a lot in common with the above). I like the addition of carrots in the Practical Paleo recipe, it's very nice. Basically, though, I have made these different versions so many times that I now end up mixing and matching aspects of different recipes based on my mood and what I have around.

After you eat the chicken, save it for making a delicious bone broth later on!!! (Nourishing Traditions and Practical Paleo both have good recipes, and there are lots online).