Thursday, October 2, 2008

Tomatillo roast chicken

A week or so ago Alex bought tomatillos at the Mexican take out place/grocery store down the street, and I've just been looking at them and thinking what to do. I knew I wanted to do something with chicken, and last night I had no dinner plans. So I told Alex to bring home a chicken. I didn't want to make a salsa, and that's pretty much all I could find when thinking about things to do with tomatillos. I wanted more of a sauce, creamy and a little tart from the tomatillos, but also spicy. I settled on roasting, then pureeing. And oh, it was delicious. 
Tomatillo roast chicken
1 whole chicken, 3-4 pounds
2 T butter, melted
1 t chili
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 t cumin
1 t salt
ground pepper
4-6 tomatillos, quartered
1/2 onion, large dice
2 stalks celery, sliced
1 or 2 Thai chilis
6 cloves of garlic, whole
1/4 c water 

Heat the oven to 375. Combine the melted butter, chili, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper. Rub under the skin, all over the breast and legs. Sprinkle the skin with more salt and pepper. Combine the vegetables in a roasting pan, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and pour water over. Nestle the chicken in the middle, and roast for 45 minutes to an hour. Turn up the heat to 450, roast for about a half an hour longer, until the vegetables are soft and the chicken is done. Let the chicken rest and put all the veggies in the blender with their sauce, blend until smooth, and taste for salt. Serve over chicken. 

4 comments:

  1. My blog is simi-gf! I eat gf but I blog about other suff too. This looks tasty, I cant wait to make it! I love your blog! Thanks so much for all of the great dinner ideas!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, thank you! Thanks for reading!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I always start with a hot temp and then turn it down after 20 to 30 mins because otherwise it begins to smoke up the kitchen. Interesting! I also don't cook it for much more than an hour.

    Love you!

    Mom

    ReplyDelete
  4. We made this - not because we're avoiding gluten, but because we were looking for a roasted chicken and tomatillo recipe to make.

    We liked it, but wished it was a little more... zingy. I think we could have added more tomatillos. I had some extra yellow pepper around, so I added that in the last little bit of cooking. It tasted good, probably sweeter than it otherwise would have.

    In any case, if you're looking for a similar type of recipe, you might consider this other one: cumin garlic chicken with tomatillo sauce.

    http://asouthernfairytale.com/2009/06/07/cumin-garlic-chicken-with-tomatillo-sauce-and-chipotle-rice/

    We haven't made it yet, but it looked like it was pretty zingy. Thought you might be interested.

    ReplyDelete