Lemon Chicken with Croutons

All wonderfully home-made and very easy to cook!

I have been watching a new TV show called 'Barefoot Contessa' presented by Ina Garten.

A very entertaining cooking show where Ina cook her meals and shows you how to decorate and set up tables in her beautiful home.

Ina was cooking this lemon chicken with croutons on one episode, the roasted chicken looked so shiningly delicious that I decided to cook it today!

Ingredients

Minimal ingredients for heart-warming, belly-filling cooked dinner!

For a large whole chicken you would need two lemons, but if you are using a small chicken like I did, as I later found out, all you need is just ONE lemon. Other ingredients included 1 onion, olive oil, butter, salt and pepper for seasoning. The loaf of sliced bread is used to make home-made croutons but if you can find a nice whole loaf of sour dough bread or baguette, the texture would be much better!

Recipe taken from Food Network website:

Ready for roasting

For the chicken:
1. Slice the onion then toss with a little olive oil in a roasting pan.
2. Sprinkle the inside cavity of the chicken with salt and pepper.
3. Place the lemon inside the chicken.
4. Pat the outside of the chicken dry with kitchen towels.
5. Brush it with melted butter then sprinkle salt and pepper.
6. Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wings underneath the body.
7. Place the chicken on the onion then roast for 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes.
8. Wrap the chicken in foil and rest for 15 minutes.

Lemon Chicken

For the croutons:
1. Dice the bread into cubes.
2. Heat a large saute pan with 2 tablespoons olive oil until very hot.
3. Turn the heat to medium-low and saute the bread cubes, tossing frequently until nicely brown.
4. Add more olive oil if needed, season with salt and pepper.

Finally, put the croutons on a large plate then place the cut-up chicken pieces on top then serve.

Croutons and Brocolli

I decided to add some greens to the meal, therefore boiled some brocolli and seasoned with salt.

Chicken pieces on croutons

The chicken looked beautiful with nicely browned skin and gave out nice lemon fragrance.

However, the chicken meat was unfortunately too dry as I mis-read the cooking time as 1 hour 45 minutes (at least!). A big mistake my part, as I should have even reduced the cooking time more as I used a small chicken rather than a large one!

The chicken could have done with a tiny bit more seasoning after resting (sprinkle more salt!). However, the lemon taste was wonderfully refreshing and the croutons soaked up all the nice juices of the roast, which made it a bit too soft. I prefer croutons to be more crisp, perhaps I did not fry it long enough...hhhmmm....

Then the brocolli was too soft as I boiled them a tad too long.......

Even though it is a very easy recipe to follow, it does need some attention to details and more care with cooking.

I will try and cook this dish again another time, when I feel like having a nice hot roast dinner!