Recipe: Easiest Ever Roast Chicken

This chicken never disappoints. 

Boyfriend is a ridiculously lazy cook, as well as a garbage can for food, so imagine my skepticism when he "cooked a chicken for dinner". With reluctance, I ate some of what he'd sliced and, to my glorious discovery, it was moist, delicious, and had crispy skin! Hurrah! An easy recipe with little to no effort involved is actually delicious.

You can thank me later.

Easiest Ever Roast Chicken

Ingredients

• 1 3-4 lb young chicken (I got a Kosher Valley Young Chicken at...you guessed it....WF)
• 1/2 small onion, cut into wedges
• 1/2 apple, cubed
• Fresh Spices: Thyme, Rosemary, Sage
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced thinly 
• 1 cinnamon stick
• Sea Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper
• Olive Oil

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven at 350F. While you're waiting, take out the "innards" from your chicken (mine didn't have them included - yay!), and stuff it with your onion, apple, spices, garlic and cinnamon until it's full. The cavities in young chickens are pretty small, so you might have to get a little extra friendly with your chicken to make it fit...

2. Rub olive oil over the entire chicken, and then season with as much salt and freshly ground pepper as you like. I like mine pretty seasoned. 

3. Place on either a broiler pan or - if you're having a "me" moment - just put it on a baking rack over top of a cookie sheet lined with foil. It cleans up pretty easily. (A trick one of my coworkers suggested: if you want to just put it on the cookie pan, surround it with rice or potatoes, and they'll soak up some juice so your bird still gets crispy.)

4. Put in the oven for ~20 minutes per pound; then you'll want to raise the temp to 425F for an extra 20 or 25 minutes so it gets the skin nice and crispy.

5. Pull it out of the oven, and wait 15-20 minutes before carving !

How to carve a chicken (yeah, I didn't know how to, either):

My first attempt was a butchery, but hopefully it'll improve with time!

Thanks for Reading!

CJ

Recipe: Mexican Chicken Lime Soup

I've been terrible with Paleo lately. I haven't committed, I've scrounged, and I've been digging into the candy dish at work. So I need to step it up. Life's been a bit on the difficult and stressful side recently, which has also contributed to the sheer lack of motivation. So I'm working on it. See, nobody's perfect...you just have to keep trying, and you'll get there.

That being said, the other night I was feeling highly unmotivated, but also starving and craving Mexican food. Scouring the awesome Paleo websites out there, I found this gem of a recipe, and wanted to share (with my amendments, of course!).

(also, I may have scarfed down my bowl before remembering to take a photo, so the stock one from Paleoaholic will have to do...)

 Mexican Chicken Lime Soup

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp (ish) of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 finely chopped medium-sized onion
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, pressed (or sliced thinly, if you don't have a press)
• 3 chicken breasts, cut into slightly larger than bite-sized pieces
• 3 canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, plus some extra sauce (this is to your taste. I think I used like, 5 peppers, but mine was a little spicy, even for me. If you just want the flavor, and not the heat, just use one!).**Note: Make sure the can you buy doesn't add high fructose corn syrup. Most have sugar in them, but you don't want any HFCS. Yuck.
• 4-5 cups of chicken broth, depending on how brothy you like your soup
• Juice of 2 limes
• 1 handful of fresh, roughly chopped cilantro
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 Hass avocado per serving, sliced thinly

Instructions

1. Heat the olive oil over medium in a large pot (this one is the one I use, that I can't live without), put garlic and your onions in there and let them get nice and translucent, and the garlic will get fragrant (about 5 minutes). Toss in your cubed chicken, salt and pepper to taste, and stir your mixture every so often for the next 5-7 minutes, or until you can tell the chicken is cooked. Then add your peppers and adobo sauce, and give it a good stir.

2. Move the pot to a cool burner, take two forks, and carefully pull your chicken cubes, so they're a little bit smaller, and not so chunky. It makes for a much nicer eating experience. Paleo doesn't have to be lazy! Move your pot back onto the hot burner, and add your chicken stock.

3. Let this simmer for anywhere from 15 - 30 minutes; the longer you do this the more the flavor melds together. Right before you serve, add the lime juice to the pot and stir. 

4. To serve, place some slices of avocado in the bottom of your bowl, ladle in the soup, and top with some chopped cilantro and some extra avocado! Depending on your dairy tolerance, you can probably add a dollop of sour cream here, or some pepper-jack cheese to make it extra yummy. 

(Note: this soup is EXCELLENT the next day, too, because all the flavors come together much more overnight. So make plenty!)

Thanks for Reading!
CJ