Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Tale of the Roast Chicken

I love to watch the Food Network and I love to cook. The longer I'm married the more adventerous I feel. So, last week the Food Network had quite a few shows on how to roast a whole chicken! I thought "I can do that!" So I set off to tackle the whole chicken. Once I got it home, I realized that chickens are different from Turkeys. When you buy a Turkey for thanksgiving, usually the neck and giblets are in a bag inside the bird. Well apparently it's different with chickens! I was not prepared for that. So, home alone, at 6pm, I am staring at this chicken and peering inside of it. How do I know what's a giblet or not? I have to tear the neck bone off? Yuck! So 30 minutes later I am fairly confident I have taken care of all that stuff.

Once I got past that, the rest was easy. Season & stuff with lemon, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. About 45 minutes into cooking I added chopped turnips, parsnips, sweet potatoes, onion, garlic and carrots. I also layered bacon on the top of the chicken to keep it moist (Per Tyler Florence on the Food Network! Good tip!)....it smelled so good!

So, it was done almost 2 hrs later. Poor Caleb, dinner after 8pm! We take it out, let it rest for 10 minutes then realize we have to carve it up.
Well.....it's kind of easier said than done for us! Caleb was so happy he got out his carving utensils and set out to carve away. It was taking a while so I checked in (with my camera of course).......this is what I saw.

STEP 1: Good intentions of properly carving the bird


STEP 2: Forget it and tear into it


STEP 3: Still kind of hard and messy but easier than cutting! Poor chicken it didn't know it had it coming!

The pic looks funky but it's all my yummy roasted vegitables! =)

Our chicken ended up to be shredded chicken that we mixed in with the veggies and it turned into a chicken/veggie hash. Don't get me wrong it had awesome flavor! But.....didnt look to pretty. Next on our list is to learn how to properly carve a chicken =) Good thing we aren't cookin' the Turkey this year or we'd be in trouble!
You live and you learn........just another day in the life of Caleb & Becky. =)
**I'd like to thank my husband Caleb for allowing me to be a camera hound and letting me capture this fun frustration on film** =)