Sunday Dinner: Roasted Chicken, Potato Salad, Summer Corn and Baked Peaches with Whipped Cream

I really like to do a roasted chicken on Sunday night for two reasons: 1) it makes a great Sunday dinner; 2) I use the leftover meat during the week, which makes meal time so much easier to prepare after a day at work. 

For this chicken, I sort of followed Ina Gartner’s recipe, but tweaked a lot. Original recipe can be found here.

INGREDIENTS

1 (5 to 6 pound) roasting chicken

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 large bunch of fresh thyme, plus 20 sprigs (loosely chopped)

3 cloves of garlic, diced

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 lemon, halved

1 large yellow onion, thickly sliced

DIRECTIONS

1.       Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

2.       Rinse the chicken inside and out.

3.       In a small bowl, mix the salt, pepper, loosely chopped thyme, diced garlic and olive oil.  Separate the skin from the chicken and rub the mixture underneath the skin.

4.       Put the remaining thyme, lemon and onion in the cavity of the chicken.

5.       Liberally sprinkle with salt and pepper.

6.       Roast the chicken for 1 1/2 hours, or until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh.

7.       Remove the chicken to a platter and cover with aluminum foil for about 20 minutes.

8.      Slice and serve.

I served this with potato salad (red potatoes, chopped hard boiled eggs, celery, a combination of light mayo and mustard, a generous sprinkle of salt, pepper and paprika) and boiled corn (which I sprinkled with all seasons salt). For dessert, I baked peaches with a touch of sugar, topped them with freshly made whipped cream and two small sugar cookies.

It was a great way to start the week!