Roast chicken with garlic, ginger, chilli, lime and coriander

Roast chicken with garlic, ginger, chilli, lime and coriander

I have a confession to make... I've only ever cooked one whole roast chicken in my life! Until today which marked roast chicken number two! And what a roast chicken it was!

Being quite an amateur in the roasting department, I was worried about over-cooking the chicken and drying out the meat. However, the Waitrose recipe* I used kept the meat deliciously moist and juicy.

And it was cheap as chips to boot! We bought a #SOS chicken last night down from £5 to £2.99 and I also had some shelf limes to use up which were reduced from 35p to 5p each. Roast chicken with garlic, ginger, chilli, lime and coriander it is then!

Here's how:

1) Preheat oven to 190 degrees.
2) Finely chop a small piece of ginger, a few cloves of garlic, and two fresh chillis.
3) Zest and juice a lime.
4) Throw all the ingredients into a food processor with a small bunch of coriander, a glug of olive oil and blitz into a paste.
5) Using your hands, push the paste underneath the skin of the chicken and spread evenly over the breast of the chicken.
6) Rub the rest of the chicken with the remaining paste.
7) Roast the chicken for the correct time according to the weight of the chicken.
8) Baste with the juices from time to time.
9) Leave to stand before serving.

We had it with roast potatoes (the potatoes were from the shelf too and cost 5p!) and mixed veg. I also popped some lime wedges into the oven just before serving - warming the wedges made the limes even juicier and easy to squeeze.

The photo doesn't do this chicken justice - the meat was so moist and the skin tasted divine (not burnt as the photo might suggest!). I think I shall be cooking roast dinners more often now having discovered this recipe!

* The original recipe I followed can be found on the Waitrose website at: http://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/recipe_directory/s/summer_roast_chicken_with_ginger__chilli_and_lime.html