Easy & Impressive Gluten Free Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner

Meat and two veg are the stars of this easy roast chicken dinner perfect for a Mother's Day meal!  You'll be sure to impress with expertly cooked juicy chicken, beautiful seasonal veg and homemade gravy.

Yield at least 3 servings

Easy & Impressive Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner 

UK Mother's Day is this coming Sunday and roast dinners are a big part of the UK's culinary culture, but instead of going out this Sunday and flashing the cash, stay in! Put on your chef's hat and treat mom to this truly easy and completely impressive roast chicken dinner.

This is the ultimate roast chicken dinner: it's impressive and it's easy for even the most novice of cooks to make. Earlier this week, I shared my recipe for Lavender & Rose French Macarons and mentioned that they'd be the perfect Mother's Day dessert. Well this juicy chicken, those crispy and fluffy hasselback potatoes and these vibrant spring vegetables would be a truly wonderful combination to serve before whipping out a tray of your tasty homemade macarons.

One of the trickiest things to get right with big roast meals is the timings, but don't worry, I'll help you with that. I think our favorite part of this meal was the juicy chicken with my homemade gravy. Don't be intimidated by this recipe: the chicken gets put in the oven first and the potatoes go in about 40 minutes after. You make the gravy and the vegetables at the last minute while the chicken rests and serve it all up with a big smile while mom puts her feet up. Perfection!

Can't get enough chicken? Be sure to check out this board and get your fill:

Ingredients:

For the roast chicken
1/2 cup melted butter
1 large roast chicken about 1.5kg/3lb
1 tbsp Herbs de Provenance
2 bay leaves
2 shallots or small white onions skin-on and halved
4 or 5 baby carrots, frozen is fine
Schwartz Perfect Shake Chargrilled Chicken (optional)
225ml water

For the chicken gravy
1 tbsp cornflour/cornstarch
1 tbsp water
dripping from chicken, fat skimmed off
water up to 250ml
salt
pepper

For the hassleback potatoes
5 or 6 evenly sized potatoes
grapeseed oil
salt

For the spring vegetables
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup green beans
1 cup carrots
1 large leek, sliced
1 large spring onion/scallion, sliced diagonally
salt
pepper

Instructions:

Easy & Impressive Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner
 

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. 

Lay the chicken on its breast in a roasting tin. Add the bay leaves, carrots, halved shallots and Herbs de Provance to the pan, around the chicken. 

Brush the back of the chicken (which is now the exposed side) with half of the melted butter and sprinkle with a bit of the chargrilled seasoning. Save the remaining butter. 

Here's what the chicken should look like:

Pour 225ml of water around the chicken and onto the vegetables and herbs. 

Loosely cover the chicken with foil and roast in the oven for 40 minutes. 

After 40 minutes, remove the chicken. It should look similar to this:

Gently turn the chicken over so that its breasts are now facing up. Be careful not to pierce the chicken's skin or all the juices will escape and your chicken will be extremely dry.

Brush the remaining butter over the chicken breasts and legs and any bit that has not been buttered. 

Scatter with more chargrilled seasoning and return the chicken, uncovered, to the oven for an hour or until the chicken is cooked through.

Halfway through the chicken's first 40 minutes in the oven, prepare the potatoes. 

Place each scrubbed potato into the well of a wooden spoon and slice cuts across the width of the potatoes from end to end. Be sure not to cut completely through the potato. If you bring the knife down until it meets the spoon, you shouldn't have any problem.

Massage each potato with grapeseed oil, allowing some to naturally fall between the potato folds, but taking care not to pry any of the folds apart. If sliced thinly enough, the potato will fan out during cooking. 

Place the potatoes on a baking tray and bake with the last hour of the chicken. Sprinkle liberally with salt when they have finished roasting and are still hot.

Once the chicken has finished cooking, remove it from the oven and leave it to rest in the roasting pan for five minutes. Then remove just the chicken onto a serving tray and cover with foil to keep warm. 

Chicken drippings, the herbs and vegetables will be left in the bottom of the roasting dish. 

Remove the vegetables, but do not throw away. Place them in a labeled zipseal bag and store in the fridge for making homemade stock. 

Pour the liquid drippings and fat into a measuring jug and allow the fat and drippings to naturally separate. 

Leave the jug for a few minutes until the fat solidifies and can be easily scooped away from the darker, "gravy making goodness" and thrown away. 

Add up to 250ml of water to the  gravy making goodness and place in a small saucepan. 

Mix the cornflour with a tablespoon of water until a paste forms. Add this to the pan as well and allow the gravy to thicken on the stove.

Melt the butter for the vegetables in a large frying pan. Add the spring onions and leeks and cook about three minutes until just starting to soften. 

Add the carrots and green beans, season with salt and pepper and saute an additional five minutes until the carrots and the green beans are just cooked but with a slight crunch. 

Serve the vegetables with slices of chicken and chicken pieces. Save all the bones from the chicken and place in a zipseal bag either in the fridge or the freezer for making homemade chicken stock.