Sunday, May 30, 2010

Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Roasted Chicken

Sometimes recipes assume too much.

I know I'm guilty of it. I'll tell you to "spatchcock a chicken" or "rub the mix under and over the skin" without really telling how to do that. I presume you either
a) already know how to do it OR
b) can find out how to do it via Google

I'm going to try to do a little better than that. Because I remember the first time I someone told me to put butter UNDER the skin of the turkey I was going to cook. Well thanks. That was helpful....how the *$&% do I do that?

Tonight we decided to do a little "pesto on pesto" action. We were wanted to fire roast a chicken with a tomato pesto and serve it on a bed of pasta with traditional basil pesto.

Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Roasted Chicken

1 whole chicken, spatchcocked (click here for someone else's video on how to do that)
1 quart buttermilk (preferably Cruze Farm's if you can get it)
1 cup tomato pesto (I used Classico's jarred version, hey, it's the weekend)
Poultry Perfect Rub & pepper to taste

Marinate the chicken in the buttermilk for at least 8 hours.

Rub the tomato pesto under and over the chicken skin like this:



Season with poultry rub and pepper and then roast indirect heat at 350f until the breasts hit 160f and the thighs are 175-180f. We did ours with natural hardwood lump charcoal on the Big Green Egg and it took a little under an hour and a half, but you could do this in your O...... your O...... your OVEN. The key is to go by temps.

Alexis made a white sauce and then added a jar of basil pesto from a local vendor at the farmer's market this weekend. She then tossed some penne pasta in the cream sauce. We were actually disappointed in the basil pesto compared to the one we make, so I'll omit the vendor name. Sometimes buying locally isn't necessarily better. But usually it is.

We topped the pasta with the whole roasted chicken.

It was just about perfect. Can't wait to try this one again.

So are you firing up the grill tomorrow?