Thyme & Garlic Roast Chicken - 2 - $

What do you mean you can't cook a roast on a weekday? Says who? Of course you can!

The following mini-recipe is an easy, yet delicious way to jazz up a bird...



Ingredients

1 Whole chicken
100gm unsalted butter, softened
1 garlic clove, crushed/finely chopped
Fresh thyme
Vegetables for roasting - potato, pumpkin, carrots, parsnips etc

Preheat your oven to 180C degrees.

Prepare your chook first. You need approximately 25 - 30 minutes cooking time per 500gm of chicken, depending on your oven. Remember that your chicken is cooked when the juices run clear when poked with a skewer or knife.
Place butter in a bowl, and add the crushed garlic and the leaves from about 4 sprigs of thyme. Mash the mixture together with a fork, until the butter is creamy and the herbs are evenly spread.
Take a very sharp paring knife and make small incisions, about 2.5 cm wide in the skin of the chicken, without cutting into the muscle. Make about 4 on each side of the bird, evenly spaced.
Slide your finger under the skin to make some room and then put a dob of butter on your finger and push it into the slits, making sure you have enough to go inside all the holes you've made.
Stuff your chicken as you normally would and place it breast side up in the roasting pan. I find this works best if you turn the bird, so time it so you get a third of the cooking time breast up, then turn it and do breast down, and the last third of the cooking it's breast side up again. The herbs and garlic will infuse through the chicken and the butter will make the skin golden and crisp.
Pop your veg in at the usual time - if you've never made a roast before, they will take about an hour to cook, so time it with your chicken's requirements above.
Make some gravy, carve, serve and...

Enjoy!