Roast Chicken with Rosemary, Lemon, and Honey

I used to buy a lot of store bought stock. Literally every couple of weeks I was spending approximately twenty dollars at the grocery store for overly salty not great chicken and beef stock. Then a couple of years ago I decided that there had to be a better way. I opened up my mom's old loved and worn cook book and scoured the pages for a chicken stock recipe. After some searching I came across a great recipe that my mom had hand written in the margins. I bought all the ingredients, roasted the chicken and made the stock. It turned out great and I have never gone back to store-bought again. During my first stock experiment I subsequently discovered that homemade roasted chicken is tasty and very easy to make. So once every couple of weeks I roast a chicken and make chicken stock. It's a great way to save money and the leftovers are great for a variety of recipes. The May issue of Bon Appetit magazine had a recipe for Roast Chicken with Rosemary, Lemon, and Honey, which promised great flavor from the fresh rosemary sprigs.

This recipe has 9 ingredients. It takes approximately an hour and fifteen minutes of prep and cooking time and makes 6-8 servings. I did make a few modifications to this recipe. Shallots weren't available at my regular grocery store and rather than go to another store and spend over ten dollars on just shallots, I chose to use an onion and ramps instead. Additionally, the recipe states to cook the chicken for 55 minutes. I found that this length of cooking time was not adequate  to cook the 4.5 pound birds that I bought. The skin on the bird also never fulled crisped up the way that it normally does when I roast chicken. I think that the olive oil, while it kept the bird moist made the skin not as crispy as I like. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

The rosemary springs in this recipe made the chicken breast taste delicious and fragrant. I was skeptical when the chicken came out of the oven since the skin wasn't as crisp as my normal roasted chicken. However, once we ate the meat my husband and I were both impressed by how much flavor the fresh rosemary gave to the chicken meat. The leftovers were great for chicken salad and I have frozen the remainder since it will make a great chicken pot pie in a couple of weeks. Overall, while the skin isn't overly crispy the meat is moist and delicious.

For the recipe go to Roast Chicken with Rosemary, Lemon, and Honey.