Easy & Impressive Gluten Free Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Meat and two veg are the stars of this easy roast chicken dinner perfect for a Mother's Day meal!  You'll be sure to impress with expertly cooked juicy chicken, beautiful seasonal veg and homemade gravy.
Easy & Impressive Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner | Anyonita Nibbles | An easy recipe for an impressive meal.
Yield at least 3 servings

Easy & Impressive Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner 

UK Mother's Day is this coming Sunday and roast dinners are a big part of the UK's culinary culture, but instead of going out this Sunday and flashing the cash, stay in! Put on your chef's hat and treat mom to this truly easy and completely impressive roast chicken dinner.

This is the ultimate roast chicken dinner: it's impressive and it's easy for even the most novice of cooks to make. Earlier this week, I shared my recipe for Lavender & Rose French Macarons and mentioned that they'd be the perfect Mother's Day dessert. Well this juicy chicken, those crispy and fluffy hasselback potatoes and these vibrant spring vegetables would be a truly wonderful combination to serve before whipping out a tray of your tasty homemade macarons.

#hassleback potatoes with roast chicken and sauteed spring veg for #mothersdaydinner | Anyonita Nibbles
One of the trickiest things to get right with big roast meals is the timings, but don't worry, I'll help you with that. I think our favorite part of this meal was the juicy chicken with my homemade gravy. Don't be intimidated by this recipe: the chicken gets put in the oven first and the potatoes go in about 40 minutes after. You make the gravy and the vegetables at the last minute while the chicken rests and serve it all up with a big smile while mom puts her feet up. Perfection!

Roast chicken ready for carving on Mother's Day | Anyonita Nibbles


Can't get enough chicken? Be sure to check out this board and get your fill:


Ingredients:

For the roast chicken
1/2 cup melted butter
1 large roast chicken about 1.5kg/3lb
1 tbsp Herbs de Provenance
2 bay leaves
2 shallots or small white onions skin-on and halved
4 or 5 baby carrots, frozen is fine
Schwartz Perfect Shake Chargrilled Chicken (optional)
225ml water

For the chicken gravy
1 tbsp cornflour/cornstarch
1 tbsp water
dripping from chicken, fat skimmed off
water up to 250ml
salt
pepper

For the hassleback potatoes
5 or 6 evenly sized potatoes
grapeseed oil
salt

For the spring vegetables
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup green beans
1 cup carrots
1 large leek, sliced
1 large spring onion/scallion, sliced diagonally
salt
pepper

Sauteed spring vegetables side dish for Mother's Day | Anyonita Nibbles

Instructions:

Easy & Impressive Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner
 

Juicy Roast Chicken for Mother's Day | Anyonita Nibbles

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. 
Lay the chicken on its breast in a roasting tin. Add the bay leaves, carrots, halved shallots and Herbs de Provance to the pan, around the chicken. 

Brush the back of the chicken (which is now the exposed side) with half of the melted butter and sprinkle with a bit of the chargrilled seasoning. Save the remaining butter. 

Here's what the chicken should look like:
Uncooked chicken with seasoning | Anyonita Nibbles

Pour 225ml of water around the chicken and onto the vegetables and herbs. 

Loosely cover the chicken with foil and roast in the oven for 40 minutes. 

After 40 minutes, remove the chicken. It should look similar to this:

Partially cooked roast chicken | Anyonita Nibbles

Gently turn the chicken over so that its breasts are now facing up. Be careful not to pierce the chicken's skin or all the juices will escape and your chicken will be extremely dry.

Brush the remaining butter over the chicken breasts and legs and any bit that has not been buttered. 

Scatter with more chargrilled seasoning and return the chicken, uncovered, to the oven for an hour or until the chicken is cooked through.

Crisp and fluffy hassleback potatoes for Mother's Day Dinner | Anyonita Nibbles

Halfway through the chicken's first 40 minutes in the oven, prepare the potatoes. 

Place each scrubbed potato into the well of a wooden spoon and slice cuts across the width of the potatoes from end to end. Be sure not to cut completely through the potato. If you bring the knife down until it meets the spoon, you shouldn't have any problem.

Massage each potato with grapeseed oil, allowing some to naturally fall between the potato folds, but taking care not to pry any of the folds apart. If sliced thinly enough, the potato will fan out during cooking. 

Place the potatoes on a baking tray and bake with the last hour of the chicken. Sprinkle liberally with salt when they have finished roasting and are still hot.

Easy roast chicken gravy for Mother's Day | Anyonita Nibbles


Once the chicken has finished cooking, remove it from the oven and leave it to rest in the roasting pan for five minutes. Then remove just the chicken onto a serving tray and cover with foil to keep warm. 

Drippings for homemade #chicken #gravy | Anyonita NIbbles


Chicken drippings, the herbs and vegetables will be left in the bottom of the roasting dish. 

Remove the vegetables, but do not throw away. Place them in a labeled zipseal bag and store in the fridge for making homemade stock. 

Pour the liquid drippings and fat into a measuring jug and allow the fat and drippings to naturally separate. 



Leave the jug for a few minutes until the fat solidifies and can be easily scooped away from the darker, "gravy making goodness" and thrown away. 

Add up to 250ml of water to the  gravy making goodness and place in a small saucepan. 

Mix the cornflour with a tablespoon of water until a paste forms. Add this to the pan as well and allow the gravy to thicken on the stove.

Fresh, sauteed spring vegetables for Mother's Day | Anyonita Nibbles

Melt the butter for the vegetables in a large frying pan. Add the spring onions and leeks and cook about three minutes until just starting to soften. 

Add the carrots and green beans, season with salt and pepper and saute an additional five minutes until the carrots and the green beans are just cooked but with a slight crunch. 

Serve the vegetables with slices of chicken and chicken pieces. Save all the bones from the chicken and place in a zipseal bag either in the fridge or the freezer for making homemade chicken stock. 

The perfect Mother's Day meal. This juicy roast chicken is paired with two vegetable sides and homemade gravy. | Anyonita Nibbles

22 comments:

  1. G'day Looks moist as can be! Who wants some of this now? ME! :)
    http://whatsonthelist.net

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    1. Haha if it's making you rhyme, you must REALLY want it! :)

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  2. RIght. That's it. Those potatoes shall be mine, mine (evil cackle). I am definitely making them by the weekend.

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  3. This is a wonderful dinner! I love those potatoes, too. I wonder if my family would make it for me for Mother's Day? Nah! I will have to make it myself. :)

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    1. Hahaha YES, KECIA! Even if I printed out this recipe & arranged all of the ingredients & made detailed notes, I'd STILL end up making it myself. lol. *sigh*

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  4. This entire meal looks heavenly. Those potatoes, yeah I want some now! I've never made hassleback potatoes before. YUM!

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    1. This was my first hassleback experience too! Highly recommend them! :)

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  5. That all looks wonderful! I, too, have yet to make the hassleback potatoes, but REALLY need to!

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  6. It's going to take me a little while to get there (since I don't have a passport yet!!!), but I'm coming for dinner! This looks absolutely delicious! :)

    - Brooke -

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  7. That looks amazing!! My husband would kill for those potatoes. Might leave this page open for a while on Sunday... :D
    x

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  8. Hi Anyonita - Oh, this looks like a fabulous dinner! I forget about Hasselback potatoes - they are so good, and I need to remember to make them. Thanks so much for sharing with the Let's Get Real party. I am pinning your post to our group board.

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  9. Oh this looks oh so yummy. I am a huge potato fan so this is right up my street. Thanks for sharing this. #sharefriday

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  10. oh Wow, those potatoes look amazing. I can almost taste the saltiness. Fabulous photos of what looks like a fantastic meal!

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  11. Oh goodness, does this ever look amazing!

    Thanks for joining the Link Up this week!

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  12. Yum!!!! This is going on my Pinterest recipe inspiration board now!!

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  13. Your chicken looks awesome. I'm so ashamed of my roast chicken now. Waaaaa…

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  14. What a great idea using the wooden spoon as a guide for slicing the potatoes. :) As for the chicken, this sounds delicious! I'm only mentioning this because I did it so recently, but if you haven't done this before, you should try some sort of Chinese Five Spice the next time you roast a chicken. Sooooooo good! I tried that for the first time on my last roast - mixed with some butter and orange juice/zest. I have to remember to use shallots this way sometime too! I always quarter onions with a roaster, but the shallots would make for a nice change. :) [#TastyTuesdays]

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  15. What a lovely mother's day dinner! I think I will try your cooking method for the chicken, next time I roast one. I've always just roasted breast up. Thanks for sharing at Simple Supper Tuesday.

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  16. Amazing recipes and I suspect there will be some very lucky moms out there for Mother's Day! Thanks for sharing at Do Tell Tuesday, and I hope you have a chance to link up again this week! http://www.vintagezest.com/2014/04/do-tell-tuesday-18-cohost-features.html

    Diane @ Vintage Zest

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  17. I am hoping my husband will take the hint and make this for me soon, ha ha ha, it looks wonderful! I featured your potatoes this week!

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  18. I'm going to try this tonight. I pulled some chickens out of the freezer this morning, and went on a search for a recipe. My roasted chickens are getting boring. They are not as brown as I would like or flavorful on the bottom. I'm excited about trying it. Thanks.

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