Roast Chicken with Amaretto and Herbs

When I am not in the mood of cooking up a storm, I will try to roast a chicken. So far, I have tried 2 different recipes for roasting chicken, and this is by far, my favorite recipe. I like this recipe very much because it contains alcohol !!! Maybe next time I will try to replace it with beer and see how it tastes like :) 

Trust me, this roast chicken tastes very good when it is marinated with hard liquor. You can smell it from the living room when the oven timer is still ticking away. I am not exagerrating but the aroma even lingers on after the chicken is finished...

So here it is, my favourite roast chicken with Amaretto and herbs.

(Recipe adapted from Violet Fenying's old blog, click here for instructions on how to retrieve her old recipes)

Ingredients (for 3-4 persons)

1.5 - 2 kg chicken for roasting

Marinade :

1 tsp salt

0.5 tsp ground pepper

2 tbsp light soya sauce

2 tbsp Amaretto (original recipe used cognac or brandy)

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp honey

0.5 tsp thyme

0.5 tsp rosemary

0.5 tsp oregano

0.5 tsp basilicum

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients of the marinade together. Clean the chicken and rub the outside of the chicken thoroughly with the marinade. Set it aside for 1-2 hrs.

2. Preheat the oven to 200C.

3. Place the chicken breast-side up on a baking tray and truss the legs. Bake for 45 min. 

4. Remove from oven after 45 min. Using a sharp knife, make slits at the joints (to allow the chicken joints to be cooked fully), and put it back into the oven for another 15 min or until golden brown.

Note : The original recipe used Cognac but I used Amaretto because I don't have Cognac around, and honestly it tasted just as good. (Btw, Amaretto is a sweet coffee liquor which I often use for making tiramisu). You can also use any other hard liquor such as whisky to produce the same effect. The original recipe used 1 tsp of mixed herbs, but I used 0.5 tsp each of thyme, rosemary, oregano and basilicum, to give it a richer herbal flavour.


Last updated on 4 Sep 2011: See also my new post on Elixir d'Anvers and Roast Chicken.