Now with breakfast which is the most important meal of the day gone, we concentrated on cooking lunch. Quite a few months back, we made the decision to buy a standard convection oven instead of a microwave oven or one of those dual feature ones. I also kinda got poisoned by my mum into buy a really big and at least a good quality one. It cost us a cool RM 899 and we have been sort of making use of it once in a while.
The oven comes with a rotisserie function and we decided to put it to good use by grilling and entire chicken. So the day before we bought a whole chicken from the market and seasoned it with Sage, Thyme, Rosemary, Salt, Pepper and Olive oil. We decided to stuff the chicken with what we can find in our kitchen and ended up with an apple, half a brown onion, the left over stalks from the herbs and some garlic.
We forgot about the lemon because the lemon was at my parent's place. However they came over for dinner the night before and brought the lemon. So I sliced half the lemon and put on top of the chicken and squeezed the juice from the other half all over the chicken....
Before the roasting can begin, I had to stick the chicken through and through using the rotisserie spit and this was the first time I did it. I thought it would be really hard since the chicken was so fully stuff with apples and onions but it went through really easily.
Next was to set the oven to 235 degree Celsius and put the chicken in for a nice sun bathing under the heating elements.
In total the chicken would be spinning around and sun bathing for 1 hour 45 minutes. At the 1 hour mark, I basted the chicken to ensure that the skin won't get burnt and also I put in some carrots lightly seasoned with salt, pepper and olive oil.
After another 15 minutes of cooking, it was the finishing touches to the dish and I put in some nice fresh brown mushrooms also lightly season with salt, pepper and a dash of olive oil.
The chicken gets to spin for another 30 minutes and after that....
The chicken came out nice and golden brown and it smelt oh so good. The carrots were nice, soft and cooked and the mushrooms were just soaking in the delicious flavors at the bottom of the tray. The most excruciating thing about this entire experience is that once the chicken comes out of the oven, it needs to sit for 15 minutes before we can eat it.
It was the worst things to have to do since it smelt so good and by the time it was done, it was close to 2pm already. After the 15 minutes of resting we could finally cut into the chicken and to my relieve it was cook all the way even at the thickest part of the bird.
What the verdict you might ask? Well for the first time we grilled and entire chicken I think it was quite a success. It tasted almost like Dave's Deli roasted chicken. It was succulent and the herbs have done their thing throughout the night. The skin was also very crispy which is a surprise. I think if we had the lemon earlier it would have tasted even better. The stuff apples and onions also did their job and infused the flavors into the chicken and they we nice and soft to eat. The remaining stalks of the herbs also gave the apple, onion and the inside of the chicken a bit of taste.
To think that it was so easy to do, I think we will be making this dish more often in the future and actually we did cook it one more time for my family. I am drooling just looking at the pictures now. I think just this roasting of chickens made the oven worth all the money.
It is not over yet to this crazy cooking and eating birthday. One more meal to go and it is gonna be a cracker.
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