Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I'm going to share
with you my spatchchcocked - if you will - roast chicken that I'm going to serve with a delicious
dill chimichurri and we're going to also make a little bit of a wine sauce to drizzle on
top to keep it super flavorful and delicious, I love this recipe, it has become our go-to
family roast chicken recipe, I made it recently for Joe's birthday dinner, if you follow me
on Instagram you would have already seen it, it's fantastic and I wanted to share it with
you because it's sort of like an updated roast chicken that I've been making for a long time
now and I like the spatchcocked idea which is basically just butterflying the chicken,
I already have it done.
But all you do is you take out the backbone, and then you put your cut chicken cut side
down and then you press it on the breast to break the bone.
You can do it yourself or you can also ask your butcher to do it, if you buy your meat
at your local grocery store, every grocery store that I know of in the US anyway, has
a meat department, if your chicken is already pre-packed you can take that chicken to your
meat guy and be like 'hey, my friend, Fred, how you doin?
Can you spatchcock this for me?
Can you take out the backbone?' and they will do that!
And they will also give you the backbone so that you can use it in stocks and things like
that, so if you find it intimidating to do it yourself, ask your butcher to do it for
you.
So I have it in my big pan here, you want to use a pan that you can go from oven to
stove top and I have a little drizzle of olive oil underneath, so what I'm going to do now,
this could not be easier, it could not be simpler but it is absolutely phenomenal.
I just take lemons, I also take a whole head of garlic, I don't even peel it, put that
right underneath, this is going to give you lots of flavor and it's also going to give
you lots of flavor when you go to make your gravy.
And then a couple of onions, like I said, I don't peel because I will be straining the
juices anyway and the skins will give the sauce a really good color.
I've got my oven preheated to 425F I like a lot of high heat for this.
It's only going to be in there for an hour and 15 minutes or so because the chicken has
been flattened it doesn't take as long to cook, but you want to keep an eye on it of
course.
Just put all your goodness around it, take your parsley.
Oh my goodness wait till you see how good your house is going to smell.
And then I take some rosemary, it's not the best rosemary, but sometimes our grocery store
lacks in certain areas.
Then a drizzle of olive oil for good color.
Good crispy skin.
Lots, and I mean lots, and by the way, I did season the cut side of the chicken with some
salt, lots of salt and pepper.
You know this is going to be good.
This is going to be your go-to roast chicken recipe, I'm telling you, it's so fool-proof
and if you're doing one, I always do two and if you follow me on Instagram, you'll know.
Squeeze of lemon.
Like so.
It's really easy rustic cooking, which I love, it's the kind of cooking I don't really stress
over, it's the kind of cooking that gets better and better the less you fuss with it, do you
know what I mean?
So that looks phenomenal, if you want to assemble this situation in the morning, pop it in the
fridge, the lemon will sort of like marinate the chicken a little bit, it will tenderize
a little bit but if you didn't think to do that and you want to pop it into the oven
right now, you can!
So that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to pop it in for an hour and fifteen minutes
and I'll show you what it looks like when it's done then we make our chimichurri then
we make our sauce, and then we eat.
And it's heavy!
My chicken was in the oven for about an hour and fifteen minutes, you want to make sure
that you check the temperature, I inserted a meat thermometer, I let it reach 165 then
I let it rest for a bit when it comes out, it's been resting for about twenty minutes.
It looks golden brown, delicious and gorgeous and I can't wait till dinner.
Now, before we cut that and get into everything else, I'm going to take my pan.
Now if your pan, see mine didn't give out a lot of juices but enough so that nothing
really burned, but if it didn't give out any at all I would add a little bit of water to
the pan as this cooked.
So now what I'm going to do with these veggies and the garlic and the little bit of the fat,
I'm going to add a splash of water because you want to lift all of those flavors.
And a splash of vino.
A little bit of pino grigio, little bit of dry white wine will do the job beautifully.
And you need a pinch of salt.
Now you're asking me, because I know you are, well if you're having a little bit of a sauce
gravy situation happening here, why are you making a chimichurri?
Because, this, I spoon right on top when I serve the chicken.
The chimichurri goes along the side to eat with your chicken your bread, your potatoes,
anything that you want.
It's bright and vibrant and it goes along with this chicken perfectly, so I wouldn't
dare leave it out.
So what I do is I just - look what I'm doing over here.
I don't use flour to thicken this at all, I just use the garlic, see I'm kind of pushing
it out?
See what I'm doing there?
And it thickens it without having to use flour, without having to use anything like that,
you just push down on that and it does the job for you, now my pan is so big that you
can see it's really hot here, but not that hot here so I'll just make sure to rotate
the pan around as this cooks.
Now while this does it's nob for a bit here, let's move onto the chimichurri.
Everything goes into the food processor, I've got parsley, dill, chimichurri is kind of
like an Argentinian, like Green sauce but I put my own twist on it and use whatever
herb combinations I'm into.
Right now it's parsley and dill and capers and onions, and some garlic of course.
Going to add that all into a food processor, and you're just going to finely chop this.
You're not looking for a puree, you're looking for a fine chop.
So I just pulse.
This is what you want it to look like.
It takes two seconds, that's why I do it with a food processor, you can do this by hand
by the way, but I'm impatient and if I had to chop everything that fine I'd be here until
next Tuesday and I just don't feel like it so get this all out of here.
As best that we can.
To this you're going to add vinegar, lots of it.
That's what makes chimichurri so good.
Good salt - I meant to say a good pinch of salt.
Right?
And some really good extra virgin olive oil.
This is so phenomenal on salads, I mean chicken, fish, steak, shrimp, potatoes, cauliflower,
chickpeas, my grandma's shoe laces, I mean there's a long list of things this is good
on.
Tonight, we're having it with chicken.
That would be good on my foot.
Now let's look at the sauce, it's bubbling up, looks beautiful, going to take my Christmas
mitt here, turn my pan around, and let that cook.
It's thickening up beautifully, it's not going to make a ton of gravy, you can add more water
and wine here.
I don't want a lot, I want just enough to spoon over the chicken and give it beautiful
flavor.
Turn that down a bit.
Let's talk chicken.
I know I'm throwing you all over the place, but this is the thing, if you were at my house
this is what would be happening.
Your chicken has rested, look at that, falls apart.
How beautiful is that?
I do big portions, you don't come to my house and expect a teeny tiny portion.
This is 5 pound chicken feeds 4 people.
Okay?
And if anybody has a problem with that, catch me outside.
Because if you come to my house, and expect that this five pound chicken is going to serve
six to eight, what kind of person?
What kind of a person would do that?
It's got a lot of bones!
Mamma's gotta eat!
So I like this, what I do with the breast is I cut the bones as much as I can, right
off.
Right towards the back.
You guys, you don't even know how good this tastes, I just gave this a taste and it is
like liquid gold.
I'm going to turn this off, I want to show you ,y chicken I have everything plated, really
simple you've got your chimichurri, I do a few lemon wedges around, a little bit of parsley
in the middle, just because the parsley at the grocery store was pretty much a tree,
it was so big.
Now, I push everything back, and I wan that liquid right there, that gorgeous - those
juices that are just really magnificent.
Take your spoon, I would take this out and put it on the side.
I'm telling you the flavor this is going to add with the chimichurri when you serve it,
it is like nothing you ever saw before.
Phenomenal, and easy, I mean really how simple is this?
But how delicious.
I love this kind of food, it's really, I call it happy food because it's got everything
that makes me happy, it's home cooking, it's easy, it's abundant.
I took two pieces out of the side for me.
Mmm.
The chicken is perfectly cooked.
Look this has a little bit of the wine gravy on it, and then you just do a little bit of
that.
Uh uh!
Oh!
Home run!
I cannot wait for dinner, I've got so much good stuff that I cooked up today, I'm gonna
sit down, take off my apron, kick my feet back and enjoy a delicious dinner with my
family, and I'll be thinking of you the whole time because these are recipes that I'm so
thrilled to be sharing with you and I hope that they become your family go-to's, and
if this is worthy of a birthday celebration, you know it's really special.
Go to LauraintheKitchen.com for the recipe, I'm out of chicken that's already pre-cut
so I have to take this picture and I gotta go!
Go get the recipe on LauraintheKitchen.com I'll see you next time.
Bye!