Lemon-Rosemary-Garlic Roasted Chicken
So, I had a small holiday soiree last night and decided to make a super fancy meal to impress my guests. And a part of that fancy meal was lemon-rosemary-garlic roasted chicken! I was pretty excited to try this, since normally I do the same old boring stuff with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. NOT THIS TIME!! :D
Alright—I’ll stop teasing you, here’s the recipe:
Ingredients
- 2 lemons
- about 6-8 sprigs of rosemary
- 5 to 6 cloves of garlic
- 4 skin-on chicken leg quarters
- 1 cup of chicken stock
- 1 stick of butter
- 1 tbsp dried oregano
- 1/2 tbsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- salt, to taste
- black pepper, to taste
Process
For the prep, make sure your stick of butter is room temperature and soft-ish. Zest two lemons for about 1/3 cup of zest. Smash about 4 or 5 cloves of garlic. And preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
The butter mix is going to be smeared all over the chicken so be ready to get a bit messy with it. Mix the butter with the 1/3 cup of lemon zest, a little bit of salt (to taste), crush some black pepper, 1 tbsp of dried oregano, 1/2 tbsp of garlic powder, 1 tsp of onion powder.
Now liberally cover each piece of chicken with the seasoned butter and place them skin-side up in a pan. I used chicken leg quarters and drumsticks. I had two split breasts too, but those were huge and just inconvenient.
Once the chicken is in the pan, pour about a cup of chicken stock in there. Throw in the smashed garlic, put a couple of sprigs of rosemary on the top, and chop the zested lemons into 3 or 4 thick slices and kinda squeeze them on top, but make sure they’re not totally dry and add them to the pan.
Now stick it in the oven for 45 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.
Once it’s done, let it sit for about 10 minutes outside of the oven. Then enjoy!
And just to make you jealous, the rest of the menu was: fried mac and cheese (which might be another blog post soon!), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and garlic parmesan dinner knots. Just think, as tasty as it sounds, it was tastier to eat! ;)