HONEY BLACK PEPPER ROAST CHICKEN

I love roast chicken. But unfortunately, most of the roast chicken that i get at stalls are quite dry. Usually I would order the thigh and drumstick, as that's where most of the fat and flavour of the chicken is. But with this recipe, even the breast meat of the chicken is tender, tasty and juicy. Why, you might ask? It's because of the way it's marinated and cooked. As you can see in the picture, the chicken is deboned, all except the wings. This makes for more even cooking of the chicken, and you can be sure that there will be no blood dripping out of the chicken when you make the first cut. After deboning the chicken, it is then marinated in the fridge for two days, and there is no salt in the marinade, as salt draws out moisture from the meat. I only add salt at the very last minute before the chicken goes into the oven.

tender, juicy and flavourful breast meat

As shown in the picture above, the meat is tender and juicy, with the flavours going all the way into the meat because of the long marinating time. 

And look at all that juice oozing out of the meat after I've finished off the part of the chicken that I would never order if I'm eating out! Ok, enough of describing how good it tastes and let's get down to how you can make this at home. I'm not a classically trained cook. All the amounts of seasoning were just liberally sprinkled over the skin and flesh of the deboned chicken, so all I'm going to give you is the ingredients for the marinade. Don't worry, it's idiot-proof! If this idiot can do it, so can you!  If you don't know how to debone a chicken, be nice to your neighbourhood poultry seller and he just might do it for you. if not, then if I can do it on my own, you can too! So here we go!

one medium sized whole chicken, deboned

rosemary, roughly chopped

garlic powder

black pepper

brown sugar

honey

smoked paprika

sea salt

Rub all the ingredients except the salt onto the skin and flesh of the deboned chicken, place it in a ziplock back and put it in the coldest part of your fridge for two days or more. The longer you leave it in the fridge, the better the chicken will taste. I have tried leaving the chicken in the fridge for four days and the meat was still good.

Line the tray in your oven with foil to catch the juices when you are roasting the chicken. This will save you a lot of clean up time. Using olive oil, grease up a rack before you put the chicken flesh down, with some salt sprinkled on the skin and flesh. For the first 20mins, roast the chicken at 160 degrees celsius. Turn the temperature up to 200 degree celsius and continue roasting for another 20mins or until the skin becomes golden brown. Baste the chicken with a honey and black pepper mix when it looks like the skin is about to turn slightly brown.

Once that's done, put the cooked chicken on a plate and cover it with foil to let the juices go back into the meat for 10mins. Now, you can enjoy a nice juicy, tender and flavourful chicken!

Enjoy!