Roast Lemon Chicken with Carrots and Onions

We're missing our favourite Greek restaurant, so here's my take on Greek Lemon Roast Chicken. It was super tasty.

The Rub:
the juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp garlic, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp Celtic salt
1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried basil

The Bird:
1 3-5 lb chicken, rinsed and patted dry
2 halves of the squeezed lemon
The Rub

The Veggies:
5 large carrots, peeled and chopped into 1" chunks
4 medium cooking onions, peeled and cut into 1" chunks
the peeled cloves from 1 head of garlic
1/2 tsp Celtic salt
3 tbsp olive oil


The Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350F.

Start with the rub. If you don't have any lemon zest hiding in your freezer, zest a teaspoon worth off the lemon you are about to juice. That's one of my time savers, by the way. I zest and then juice about 6 lemons at a time. The zest goes into the freezer in a small jar. If you don't pack it down it freezes nice and fluffy and is easy to dig out as needed. The juice goes into another jar and stays in the fridge. It lasts at least 2 weeks, as I've always manged to use it up before then. Yes, you can buy lemon juice from the store in the little plastic lemon bottle, but that has been pasteurized. As in, everything beneficial in the juice has been boiled to death. It's dead food.

After zesting, cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into a small bowl. Set the lemon halves aside. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir to mix, and let sit on the counter while you attack the bird.

Rinse and pat the chicken dry. I like to use a Pyrex lasagna pan for this recipe, I think it's 9x13 inches. Any roasting pan will do, remember you are going to be laying veggies around the bird so make sure there will be room.

Put the chicken in the pan, boobs down. Take your rub and rub some all over the bird's back. Flip the bird and rub the rub all over her front. If there is some left, add it to the cavity along with the lemon halves and a couple of cloves of garlic. 

Get some cotton kitchen string and truss the bird. I described how to do it here. After reading what I wrote again, I would advise you to Google "how to truss a chicken" :-)

Place the carrots, onions, and garlic in a large bowl. Sprinkle the salt over them, followed by the olive oil. Mix it well and then spoon the veggie mix around the bird. Place in the oven and baste everything every 1/2 hour until done.

How long should you cook it for? Until a thermometer placed into the thigh reads 185F. It usually takes 1.5-2 hours for me to do it like this. Sometimes, when I get impatient, I turn the oven up to 375F for the last 20 minutes or so.