Herbed Roasted Chicken and Vegetables

Holy moly, you should smell my house right now.  I am upstairs and the incredible odor from dinner cooking in the oven is almost more than I can bear…roasting garlic, fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme, sweet vidalia onions, new red potatoes, cubes of newly picked butternut squash (from my garden), and perfectly seasoned chicken.  It’s a beautiful symphony; nearly brings tears to me li’l eyes.

This is another of those recipes that contains a list of ingredients sans the amounts on the herbs and seasonings.  You’re smart, you can figure out how much of what you need.

The very best thing about this recipe is that it calls for fresh ingredients.  You can substitute dried herbs for the fresh herbs if you want to, but don’t blame me if you’re not overwhelmingly moved with your dining experience.

Confessions–Things That I Learned When I Made This Dish

• Put the mushrooms on the bottom otherwise they will turn black.  They tasted okay, but they were ugly.  Seriously ugly and a bit too dehydrated (aka dry).  The ones on the bottom, under all of those magnificent vegetables, were the bomb.  Two thumbs up for those lovelies.
• Don’t put pieces of garlic on top of the chicken.  Again, they too turned black.  The color wasn’t really the issue, however.  Taste was the issue.  Burned garlic is bitter.  To tell you the honest truth, I’m not sure why the garlic burned.  I frequently cook/bake with garlic and have never had a problem.  The only thing that I can figure out is that I used the convection baking feature on my oven.  Maybe it did a blitzkrieg on the garlic.
• Special note: Please see the comments section of this post for more information regarding the method for roasting.  The 4th comment is from me in answer to a reader’s question about whether to stir the vegetables.

Other than those two minor glitches, the chicken and vegetables were perfection.  I couldn’t get enough of the butternut squash.  It added a sweet counterpoint for the savoriness of the other vegetables and chicken.  I can’t wait to make some butternut soup later this week!  Oh.  You want the recipe for that, too?  I’ll think about it.

Herbed Roasted Chicken and Vegetables
Recipe by Terri @ that’s some good cookin’
Printable Recipe

• 1 whole chicken, rinsed and trussed
• 1 small butternut squash, peeled and cubed
• 2 pounds small, new red potatoes, cleaned and cut into either halves or quarters
• 2 medium sized sweet onions, cut into large pieces such as quarters or eighths
• 2-3 garlic cloves, sliced into small chunks
• 1/2 pound mushrooms such as crimini, cleaned
• salt
• pepper
• fresh parsley–maybe about 1/4 cup
• several sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves stripped from stem and rough chopped
• 2 nice sized sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves stripped from stem and finely chopped
• olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375-degrees F.
2. Prepare butternut squash, red potatoes, onions and garlic as instructed above and put in a large mixing bowl along with the mushrooms.
3. Drizzle the vegetables and mushrooms generously with olive oil.  Toss until well coated.
4. Sprinkle the vegetables and mushrooms with salt and pepper to taste; then sprinkle with about half of the parsley, thyme, and rosemary.  Reserve the remainder of the herbs for the chicken.  Set aside.
5. Rinse the chicken under cool water.  Pat dry with a paper towel.
6. Place the chicken in a large baking dish.  Rub the entire chicken well with olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper on all sides and be sure to sprinkle a little salt and pepper into the chicken cavity.
7. Sprinkle chicken with the remaining fresh herbs.  If you don’t have enough herbs, well then simply chop some more.
8. Center chicken in baking dish.  Surround the chicken with the vegetables and mushrooms.  Any mushrooms that are exposed will most likely get too dry during the cooking process so, put them under the vegetables.
9. Bake for 1-1 1/2 hours until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165-degrees F on a food thermometer.  To measure this temperature accurately, place the thermometer in the thickest part of the meat and not resting against bone, or in fat or gristle.  I put the thermometer in the thickest part of the breast, however testing the thigh is probably the more accurate or “best” place to test for doneness.  If you do not have a thermometer, test the doneness of your chicken by piercing the chicken with a slender knife or a skewer.  The juices will run clear (no pink allowed) when the chicken is done.

Peeling and preparing the butternut squash:

1. Cut off both ends (the stem end and the blossom end).
2. Cut the squash into two pieces by cutting across the squash separating the neck from the bulbous lower portion. This will make the squash easier to handle when peeling.
3. Using a good vegetable peeler, peel away the tough outside skin.  I don’t know why a vegetable peeler works so well, but it does.
4. Place peeled squash on a cutting board and slice in half lengthwise.
5. The bulbous portion of the squash contains the seeds.  Using a spoon, scoop out the seeds.  If the butternut you are using is an heirloom variety, such as Waltham butternut, the seeds can be cleaned, dried, and saved for planting in your garden next year.  Just an FYI.
6. Cut the squash halves into wide strips.  Then cut across the strips making large cubes.