Whole Roasted Chicken with Sauteed Cabbage

Last week Central Market had whole chickens on sale for an absurd price. Actually whole chickens are often very inexpensive and provide the base for an additional soup meal. You know how people always talk about how much money you can save cooking at home instead of eating out? If you ate like this every day, you would. I like to experiment, so I'm not sure that we save any money in the long run, but we eat well and I can control everything that goes into our bodies. This dinner fed the four of us, plus leftovers for the kids school lunches for a grand total of about $8. And I could have made that under $5 by using bulk rice or lentils or another bulk grain instead of the Near East boxed couscous. That link is to the Roasted Garlic and Olive Oil flavor instead of the Herbed Chicken shown in the picture. We grabbed the wrong box from the grocery likely while trying to wrangle small toddlers from tearing open the dried beans to pour all over the aisle.

Cabbage costs absolutely nothing, like 79 cents or something. The secret to mine is sauteing in a tiny bit of bacon grease. Yumm. Cabbage is a cruciferous vegetable, like broccoli, kale, and brussel sprouts. If you clicked on that link and read any of it, it seems to prevent nearly every kind of cancer with amazing results.

Make sure you save your chicken carcass for a soup base, I'm making tortilla soup with mine.

Whole Roasted Chicken

3.5 lb whole chicken
1/2 of a small lemon, cut into quarters
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed a little
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
paprika
olive oil

Preheat oven to 400. Rinse chicken, remove any giblets and pat dry. Put salt and pepper in chicken cavity. Place lemon and garlic cloves inside chicken cavity. Place chicken on a rack in a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with paprika, kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper. Cook for approx 16 minutes per pound, though check to ensure chicken reaches an internal temperature of 160. Let rest for 10 minutes then carve and serve.

Sauteed Cabbage

1/2 head of green cabbage, sliced thinly
1/2 tbsp bacon grease
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

In a cast iron skillet, warm the bacon grease over medium heat. Add cabbage and saute until cabbage turns a bright green and softens about 7 minutes.

Everything's Better Roasted

Tonigt's Recipe: Roasted Chicken Breasts and Asparagus





Everything's better roasted. Really, meat, vegetables, you name it. And the process is pretty universal, high heat, drizzle of olive oil, few seasonings, and roast.

So the Cutters Cross spice in this recipe was given to me as a gift back in my working days. I used to belong to a professional group, TEC (they call themselves Vistage now). Our chair gave these as a Christmas gift one year. Anyway, these are great! spices. The steak seasoning is killer, and though I've been out for awhile the California Style Garlic Salt is a favorite of mine, too. I've always wanted to start a spice business, but life just keeps getting in the way. If you're looking for a gift for a foodie friend, I highly recommend a box of these spices.

Roasted Chicken and Asparagus

3 chicken split breasts



paprika



kosher salt



fresh ground pepper



Cutters Cross Cajun Spice



olive oil



asparagus


Heat oven to 425. Drizzle chicken breasts with olive oil. Season chicken breasts, with paprika, salt, pepper, and a generous sprinkling of cajun spice. Place chicken in a saute pan and roast in oven about 45 minutes or until chicken reaches 165 internal temp. Occasionally baste chicken with pan juices.


When chicken reaches 165 remove from oven to rest. Reduce oven temp to 400. In another saute pan shake asparagus with 2 tbsps olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper. Roast in oven 8 minutes or 9 if they are thick asparagus.


I also made the Barefoot Contessa's Brown Rice, Tomatoes and Basil except, I was low on both tomatoes and basil, so I only used four roma tomatoes, and 4 basil leaves. And I didn't have Texamati rice, so I used regular long grain brown rice. It was delicious. Ina Garten is my hero.