Roasting vegetables to go with chicken

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, the previous poster with the minced garlic reminds me that I have some cloves of garlic. Can I add those?

I prefer to roast an entire head/s of garlic - it's super easy and tasty, google for direx! Minced garlic can burn when roasted on high heat - not necessarily terrible, but not great either.

[Anonymous]

OP here,

I have cabbage! I looked in the fridge and found out that I do not have sprouts (did my kids sneak into the kitchen and steal the sprouts? How unfortunate is that I ended up the parent of kids with such sophisticated palates, they are totally wasted on me) and realized that I have a cabbage!

Now I am thinking of trying this:

http://ourlifeinfood.com/2010/03/16/roasted-cabbage-wedges/

I have everything listed, except my salt is not kosher.

Can I make that at 400 degrees? How much longer would I need to cook it? Could I put it in like 15 minutes before the chicken is done, and then turn it up to 450 for 15 minutes?

Also, can I roast some onions? I really love onions. I don't care about leaving out the potatoes, but I was looking forward to roasted onions.

[Anonymous]

NP here. How'd it work out, OP?

I thought this suggestion was the simplest. Personally, I'd leave out the brussels sprouts (I like them fine, but I think carrots/onions/potatoes is a great combination and the sprouts are the odd thing out).

Here's what you do:

Chop the onions
Dice up the potatoes
Maybe cut the carrots in half if they are large
Toss in your brussell sprouts too
Forget the frozen veggies - too much water
You want the veggies all around the same size

Take a large cookie sheet or any large pan you have that is oven safe. Add the veggies. Toss them in salt and pepper, and coat them in olive oil - just enough to coat, not too much.

Put them in the oven with the chicken. They will probably take around 30 minutes but it depends on small you cut the veggies. Check them maybe every 10-15 minutes flipping them so they evenly brown. Once they are nice and tender and browned they are done!

Hope this helped OP. Enjoy!

Two suggestions for next time:

1. Make your next kitchen purchase a baking sheet (or two) that has a shallow rim. If you can afford it, get two. They're totally versatile -- great for roasting veggies, baking cookies, making fish sticks, crispy kale, whatever. The flimsy ones are called "jelly roll pans"; the sturdier ones where the shallow sides are stiffer are called "quarter sheets" (small) or "half sheets" (big). (A full sheet is sized for a commercial oven, and not that useful at home.) You don't want a flat cookie sheet with no sides -- those are good for cookies but not anything that might generate a liquid that would flow off. Every kitchen should have at least one, ideally two, half sheets. With one of these, you could put your roasted veggies on the other rack that your chicken isn't using.

2. Make your next purchase after that a big cast iron skillet, or a rectangular glass baking dish. Here's another great way to do your chicken, potatoes, and onions all in the same pan. Buy your chicken already cut into pieces (or watch a youtube video on how to cup up a chicken). Wash your potatoes and cut them into slices 1/4 to 1/3" thick. Peel your onions and cut them into rings about 1/2" thick. Oil the bottom of your pan. Scatter some onion rings on the bottom, then mix up the rest of the onions and potato slices and scatter them in the middle, then arrange your chicken pieces on top, skin side up. Salt and pepper all over the whole thing. Then cover it with foil, and put it in a 350 oven for about an hour. Take off the foil halfway through, so the chicken skin browns and crisps. The chicken fat and juice will drip down and flavor the potatoes and onions. Some potatoes and onions will stick to the bottom, but dig them up -- they'll be sludgy but should be caramelized and sweet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here. How'd it work out, OP?

The chicken was nasty. I'm someone who will happily eat canned soup, or McDonald's, I try not to serve them to my kids often because I know they're unhealthy but I think they taste fine, so I'm not exactly picky about processed food, but the chicken just tasted like chemicals, plus the bag meant that it kind of steamed. At the point that the meat was clearly done, the skin was still kind of limp not crispy and yummy. Sadly, the reason I bought it was 'cause it was on sale 2 for 1, so now I need to decide what I'm going to do with the one in my freezer. I'm thinking that I'll cook it and use the meat for something like buffalo chicken wraps (shred chicken, mix with buffalo chicken sauce, blue cheese dressing and lettuce, wrap in tortilla) which should hide the taste. I think we're back to rotisserie chicken from Whole foods when we're in the mood for roast chicken.

The carrots and onions were quite tasty done this way. The cabbage was quite dry. I think I like cabbage cooked in methods with more moisture better. Luckily, I only cooked 1/2 the cabbage so I can use the other half for something tasty.

Oh, well, you can't learn if you don't try.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP, I'm 02/13/2014 18:00. Sorry I disappeared, I had a flight to catch. Roasted cabbage isn't good, apologize for not preventing that one. .

I would recommend that you check out www.epicurious.com. They have thousands of recipes, and many of them are quite simple--you can type in the ingredients you have on hand, and see what comes out.

And keep posting here, happy to keep helping out!

[Anonymous]

You could take the other chicken out of the bag and roast it.

I learned to cook at my mother's apron strings and have been cooking for myself for more than twenty years, but one thing that I've learned is that there is a kind of order to learning to cook.

You make a bunch of recipes and find one you like. Then you make something similar to the one you like, let's say with a different ingredient but a similar method--then you have a new technique under your belt. Or you make a new recipe with the same ingredient, and then you build on your repertoire with the ingredient. But "learning to cook" is just a series of small steps.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for sharing your experience, OP. Hang in there.

I agree with the PP, I'd take the second chicken out of the bag and just roast it normal in a pan. If it's possible, you could ditch whatever seasoning mix they have in that bag and just do it the regular way.

Here's one simple method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. Make sure a rack is in the middle that has enough room above it for your roasting pan and your chicken.

2. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and throw the paper towels away. (No need to rinse the chicken -- whatever's on it is going to die in the cooking process. The cross-contamination from spray in your sink is a bigger negative than whatever microbes you would be able to rinse off.) (If you were starting with a regular grocery-store chicken, you'd reach into the chicken's cavity and remove the bag full of giblets that's stored in there. I assume your chicken-in-a-bag doesn't have this. But it's an important step not to omit.)

3. In a small bowl, with a spoon or your fingers, mix together 4 tsps of soft room-temperature butter, 1 tsp. of salt, and 1 tsp. of black pepper, to form a paste.

Optional: if you have them, you can also mix in some chopped garlic (2 or 3 cloves, or 1 tsp. from a jar); and some herbs: sage, thyme, and rosemary. If you're using dried herbs, 1 tsp. ea of sage and rosemary, and 1/2 tsp. thyme. Or similar proportions of fresh herbs, but 1/2 as much thyme as the other two. Mix this stuff into your paste, adding more butter if necessary to keep it paste-like. Keep in mind the garlic-and/or-herb step is strictly optional. If you don't have them, don't worry.

4. Get 5 carrots and 5 celery stalks. Wash them, cut the ends off, and peel the carrots. Peel a medium-to-large yellow onion and cut off the two ends. With the onion on its side (the ends pointing out to the sides), slice the onion vertically into 1/2 inch slices. The slices will break apart into onion rings 1/2" thick.

5. Set aside one carrot, one celery stalk, and a few of the small-size onion rings. Scatter the rest of the carrots, celery, and onion rings in the bottom of the pan you're going to roast in. It can be anything strong enough to hold the chicken -- a roasting pan, a cast-iron skillet, a rectangular baking dish, or any other heavy oven-safe pot bit enough for the chicken.

6. Cut your spare carrot and celery stalk into halves or thirds. Stick them and the small onion rings into the cavity of the chicken.

7. Put the chicken into your roasting pan, breast side up, on top of the scattered carrots, celery and onions. (The purpose of the carrots, celery and onions is to keep your chicken off the bottom of the pan. They're an easy edible substitute for a roasting rack, which you probably don't have. At the end, they're going to be soft and cooked in chicken juices, good for scattering on the plate around your chicken.)

8. Using your hands, rub the butter/salt/pepper/optional-garlic-and-or-herbs paste all over the outside of the chicken. Leave no part unsmeared. (Later, when you're more experienced, you can smear this stuff under the skin, but as a beginner, just do it on the outside.)

9. Roast in your 350 oven for about an hour. You shouldn't need to baste. Keep an eye on it -- if the skin gets too crispy and starts to burn, cover it with a tent made of aluminum foil. You make this by tearing off two large squares of foil, putting them on top of one another, and then folding one edge of both of them over twice. Now open them, and that folded-over edge should join them in the middle to form a large rectangle. Stick the rectangle in the oven over your chicken, using that folded-over seam as the top middle seam of the tent.

10. It should be done in an hour or so. The best way to check for doneness is with a meat thermometer, stuck into the deep part of the thigh but not touching the bone. 165 is done. If you don't have a meat thermometer, you can pierce one of the thighs deeply with a sharp knife, near the bottom of the chicken. The juices should run clear. If they don't, back in the oven for another 5 minutes, and repeat.

11. Remove to a cutting board, cover with the aluminum foil tent, and let it rest at least 15 minutes before carving. Fish the carrots and celery sticks from the pan (and any onion pieces that survived), and serve alongside the chicken.

[Anonymous]

^^^
Meant 375 oven, not 350 as it says later in the recipe. Though 350 will also work fine, it will just take a bit longer and the skin will not be quite as crispy.