Heroine Chicken

This is my absolute favorite roasted chicken recipe ever. It is so flavorful and juicy. You do need to plan properly as it marinades for 48 hours! Please make it ASAP, you will not be disappointed, thanks to @Nocrumbsleft for this recipe!

Ingredients: 

• One butterflied whole chicken
• 2 tbsp kosher salt
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons peppercorns, crushed but in good-sized pieces
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 6 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
• A couple of handfuls of chopped flat-leaf parsley

Directions:

Butterfly the chicken or have the butcher do it for you. Salt the chicken extraordinarily well with kosher salt – make sure every crevice is covered

In a bowl mix lemon, peppercorn, olive oil and garlic. (Important: make sure the peppercorns are crushed into large pieces. You can use a spice mill, or mortar and pestle.)

I place my chicken in a shallow, 24-cup container with lid. It’s about 3.5 inches high and 15 inches wide. The size is important. If it’s too big, you will lose marinade. If it’s too small, the chicken won’t lay flat. This recipe is all about the marinade. You should marinate the chicken for 48 hours.

Pour half of the marinade evenly over the bird. Sprinkle with half of the parsley, about a handful. Flip the chicken over and evenly cover the other side of the chicken with the rest of the marinade. Then sprinkle the remaining parsley. Marinate for 48 hours.

Cooking the Chicken

Simple directions: The long and short of it is this – you can read everything I am about to say, or simply know that it cooks in about an hour at 375°. You want it to nicely brown. If it starts to brown too much too soon (before an hour), you can cover it loosely with foil. If it doesn’t brown enough, you can turn it up. Feel free to throw it on the grill.

When the chicken is done marinating, wipe off the excess marinade and parsley. Then, roast the chicken skin side up in a 375°F oven for about 45 minutes. As quickly as you can, baste with the chicken fat, close the oven and bake for another 15 minutes.

Heroine Chicken takes about an hour, but you will know when it’s done because the legs wiggle and it’s really brown and crispy. If the chicken is not brown enough, baste again, turn up to 425° and bake for 5 more minutes. If the wing tips are getting too brown, cover them up with foil.

Variations:

This marinade is so wonderful with any bird–but as a change up from the whole large bird, I’ve done it here with baby chickens. It’s also nice with other small birds.

I used six baby chickens, small boiling potatoes, and carrots. Wash and dry the birds and place in the marinade (as described above) in a cozy container. I doubled the marinade on a whim because of the volume. I don’t butterfly these chickens because they are very small, but I marinated for 48 hours and flipped several times, and if you skip that they won’t be the same.

Peel the carrots, cut them into halves the long way and then two more cuts to shorten into equal sticks. Place the chickens in a roasting pan. Toss the potatoes and the carrots in olive oil, then place them all in the pan with the chickens. I added some lemon slices. Cook uncovered at 325 until done. It’s usually about 2 hours, but in this case it took 2.5. Make sure to cook low and slow. Every 30 minutes, baste anything you can from the bottom. If you feel like they’re not making enough of their own juice, add some wine or chicken stock, but you don’t want it to be soupy. (If you have a convection oven, it’s nice to use on and off for 10 minutes every half hour, but it’s not necessary if you don’t.) Make sure the birds are nicely browned on top. If you feel like the vegetables are done sooner, take them out and place in a warm bowl, slightly covered, until birds are done. I left them in this time.