Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Zucchini

Roast chicken is one of my favorite weekend dishes. And if you roast it together with the vegetables, you get an almost complete meal in no time. All you need is a small salad and dinner is served.

While you're here, I also recommend my other chicken ideas: Ezekiel's Chicken and Chicken in Milk and many more. And if you're a fan of Jamie's cooking, check out my other recipes inspired by him, too.

Jamie Oliver suggests roasting the chicken with a whole lemon placed inside the bird. This way the chicken roasts faster and gets extra flavor, too. I've tried this method several times already and it really works.

You can find Jamie Oliver's original recipe HERE and in the book "Jamie's Dinners." I changed my dish a little by adding zucchini.

If you want the meat to be really tender, it's best to rub the chicken with the seasonings and let it sit in the refrigerator for even a few hours.

roast chicken with potatoes and zucchini

Instructions:

Rub the chicken well, inside and out, with salt and pepper and put it in the refrigerator. After at least an hour of resting, preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F). Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Cut the potatoes into fairly large pieces and cook them for about 12 minutes together with the (whole) lemon and the garlic cloves. Drain the water and let everything sit for 1 minute (this makes the potatoes crispier). Take out the garlic and the lemon. Dice the zucchini and mix it with the potatoes.

Prick the still-hot lemon about 10 times (you'll hear it hiss). Take the chicken out of the refrigerator and rub it all over with olive oil. Put the garlic cloves, the whole lemon and the thyme inside the chicken, place it in a roasting pan and roast in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes. After that time, take the chicken out of the pan, put the potatoes with the zucchini and the rosemary in the pan and toss them with the fat that should have rendered from the chicken. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables and roast for another 45 minutes. The chicken should be cooked through and nicely browned, and the potatoes should be golden.

Enjoy!

Additional notes:

• You can tell a chicken is properly roasted when the drumsticks pull away easily from the rest of the bird.

• Before the second roasting, you can lay 8 slices of smoked bacon on the chicken breast. Jamie suggests placing the crispy bacon on top of the potatoes after roasting.

• The chicken is even better when you take the lemon and garlic out of the roasted chicken, squeeze them and spread them over the chicken.