This roast chicken is astonishingly simple and amazingly good. You don’t even have to preheat the oven. It requires lemon verbena, which I rarely see on store shelves, even in my organic supermarket. But lemon verbena is easy to grow as long as you’ve got sunshine and water.
I have a few lemon verbena plants I keep in large pots in my garden. I cut off all the leaves at the end of the summer and dry them indoors. Then I drag the pots into my garage, where they hang out during the winter. I pull them outside in the spring when the nighttime air temperature is above 50 degrees F.
The heavenly, lemony scent of lemon verbena is unforgettable. And the plants last a long time. You can break off a section of the main plant and put it into a separate pot. They look completely dead all winter, but in the spring, green leaves burst forth. Soon, lemon verbena will be abundant.
Lemon verbena is also available online. When buying spices online, I always buy organic and check the sourcing. I prefer American-grown spices because of well-documented problems with contamination in certain imported spices.
As long as you’ve got lemon verbena, you can make this dish.
Lemon Verbena Roast Chicken
Lemon verbena and a lemon make this roast chicken amazingly delicious.
Ingredients
- 1 4-pound organic chicken
- 1 lemon
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons dried lemon verbena
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
Wash the chicken, pat it dry and place it in a roasting pan.
Cut the lemon in half, and squeeze both halves all over the chicken.
Put the squeezed lemon halves inside the chicken cavity.
Mix all other ingredients in a small bowl.
Put 1 teaspoon of the seasoning mixture inside the chicken cavity
Spread the rest of the mixture evenly all over the outside of the chicken
Turn the oven to 350 degrees F.
Place the chicken into the cold oven and roast for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Let the chicken rest for 5 minutes, and then serve.
Wash and pat dry a fresh chicken. I roast the giblets (except for the liver) right in the pan with the chicken.
Mix olive oil with lemon verbena, salt and pepper.
Spread the mixture all over the outside of the chicken. No need to preheat the oven. Turn it to 350 degrees F, and roast the chicken for an hour and 15 minutes.
No Comments