the review: roasted chicken and fall vegetables

I was a little worried about dinner tonight. First of all, I didn’t get back into town today until Gus was already at riding lessons and I had no groceries. So there we were at the grocery store with no naps, no snack, and late to start dinner. I let the kids buy those ridiculous frosted sugar cookies that look like they are made with an entire gallon of food coloring and lard. And I forgot to buy chicken. I went back in the grocery store only to find that they didn’t have your basic cut up chicken. It was either a family pack for 20 or a 10 pack of chicken thighs. I almost quit right then and ordered pizza.

I am so glad that I powered through. This chicken and vegetable recipe was absolutely delicious. The flavors were perfect – not too spicy for the kids, but still well-seasoned – and the cooking time was just right. The kids ate more chicken than I have seen in a long time, plus seconds of potatoes. They weren’t all that keen on the butternut squash, but I thought it was excellent.

I did modify the recipe a bit. Obviously, with no available appropriate chicken pieces, I had to improvise. I used a double pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts instead of the bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces. This resulted in a lot less chicken (probably a little over a pound instead of the called for three pounds). I also used a fresh butternut squash and less than one pound of potatoes. I’ll tell you something. This recipe says that it feeds four. I realize that three pounds of bone-in chicken is not the same as one pound of boneless, but I can’t for the life of me see how this feeds four people. It was so much food! There is no way that all that food fit on one baking sheet as shown in the picture. I could barely fit mine onto one sheet with fewer pieces of chicken and less vegetables. There are definitely some vegetables missing in that original shot.

Ok, back the adjustments. Given that I had less chicken (sort-of) and less veggies, I halved the spice mixture. I did not halve the olive oil because I didn’t have skin on my chicken and thought it needed the extra fat. This was a good choice as it resulted in very juicy chicken. Covering less meat with more seasoning produced good, balanced flavor all around. I would definitely recommend upping the seasoning mix if you are baking the whole chicken as instructed. I did follow the recipe’s oven temperature and cooking time. Both were perfect. The chicken got good and brown, and the vegetables were perfectly tender with a nice crust.

One last bonus? This recipe took less than 45 minutes from start to finish. Perfect for a week night. Please try this one. It was an excellent balance of flavor and simplicity. Williams-Sonoma hitting it out of the park once again...