While mommy made amazing baked chicken (I don’t ever recall hearing the word ‘roast’ or ‘roasted’), especially around Christmas-time, when turkey wasn’t as popular as it is today in the Caribbean during the holidays. Typically it would be a large chicken cut into large pieces seasoned with Caribbean Green Seasoning and roasted until it was golden brown and fully cooked.
You’ll Need…
2 whole chicken (about 3-4 lbs each)
3 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon Caribbean Green Seasoning
2 stalks rosemary (divided)
8 sprigs thyme (divided)
8 sage leaves (divided)
2 head of garlic (tops trimmed off)
2 cups of chicken stock
2 tablespoon honey
2 lemons (juice)
3/4 tablespoon dry mustard powder
Notes. Please use the video below to follow along as some questions you may have will answered there. I didn’t use a wire rack in the roasting pan, but you may if you wanted. Be sure to spray your roasting pan with cooking spray or line it with foil to help making clean-up later easier. If doing this recipe gluten free be sure to go through the full list of ingredients to make sure they meet with your specific gluten free dietary requirements. Especially the chicken stock you use.
In a small bowl mix together the oil, Caribbean Green Seasoning, black pepper and salt. Brush the chicken with this marinade (in and out). Stuff the cavity of each chicken with rosemary, thyme, sage and one head of garlic each (try to place them last as we’ll remove them during roasting) . In the video below I showed how I trimmed off the top part of the garlic so later on the garlic itself will be easier to remove out of the skin.
Place the now seasoned and stuffed birds in your roasting pan and pour the chicken stock on the bottom. Then into a 400 F preheated oven on the middle rack for one hour. If you find that it’s getting dark or burned in some areas, you may lightly tent them with foil. I didn’t.
After 1 hour, remove the garlic from the cavity of the chicken and place the chicken back in the oven but raise the temperature to 425 F . Time to make the Lemon Honey Mustard Glaze. In a blender or food processor (I used a magic bullet) add the garlic cloves (remove the skins), honey, mustard and juice from the lemons. Should you want a more pronounced lemon flavor, zest the lemons and add it to the glaze. For a more pronounced mustard flavor, add 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard as well.
One hour and 20 minutes later, it’s time to remove the chickens from the oven and hit them with their first coat of glaze with a brush. Since the sugar in the honey will make it easy to burn when they roast moving forward, may I recommend you lower the shelf in the oven and to keep an eye on things in case you need to rotate the roasting pan.
I applied 5 coats of the glaze in about 15-20 minutes (from the time I started applying the glaze). Keep in mind that if you use larger chickens they may take a bit longer to fully cook.
Remove from the oven once they’re fully cooked and PLEASE allow them to rest for about 8-10 minutes before you cut/serve. At the one hour mark when I removed the garlic, I also removed the chicken stock from the pan to make my gravy. Should you be interested in that chicken gravy recipe, please let me know by leaving a comment.
Definitely not mommy’s baked chicken, however as with most of the recipes I share, her mark in in there somewhere.
