#ewew cooks Slow Roasted Chicken with Lime

I was intrigued to find out how a slow roasted chicken would taste like (since I've never made one before) when phonghongbakes made Nigella Lawson-inspired Slow Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken.

And the idea of simply throwing everything in the oven at-one-go seemed like a fuss-free simple method of cooking to get a lovely end result.  Now who wouldn't want that, right?  So, I thought I'd give this Slow Roasted Chicken with Lime a go.

But I was already half skeptical at the idea since phonghong's lemons turned out bitter, so I better do a test run with just one portion.  I happened to have one whole chicken leg in the freezer.  Then I thought...hmmm, since this slow roasting method takes up to 2 hours in the oven, I could probably throw in some hard root vegetables and they might get soft in the lengthy roasting process.  So I got myself a corn on the cob, a carrot and a potato from the wet market.  There weren't any lemons that day, so I had to substitute them with limes.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken leg

1 potato
1/2 a small carrot
1/2 a corn on the cob
3 cloves of garlic
2 limes (including the juice of half a lime)

Preparation:

Season whole chicken leg with salt and freshly cracked black pepper and, since I didn't have any fresh thyme, I added a tiny sprinkle of dried rosemary.

Since I'm going to use a low and slow cooking process, I'm not even going to parboil the root vegetables.  I'm just going to cut it into rough sized pieces and chuck it in the oven to see how it'll turn out.  

Method:

Season the potato and carrot chunks with salt and black pepper and drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle some salt on the corn on the cob and rub it with some butter (this will hopefully give it a nice charring).  Put the chicken and vegetables on a tray lined with baking paper.  Drizzle olive oil, squeeze some lime juice (from half a lime) over the chicken leg and chuck in the balance 3 lime halves.

Cover with aluminium foil and bake at 160°C for 1 - 1.5 hours.

After one hour, I removed the aluminium foil just to check if the root vegetables have soften enough.  A prick with a fork revealed that the potatoes were soft already while the carrots offered a slight resistance when poked.  At this point, the corn looked done to me but I thought I'll keep it in the oven longer to get some char on it.

That's when I decided that one hour is sufficient already and I will now crank up the temperature to 200°C for the next phase of cooking.  At this time, I also tasted the liquid at the bottom of the tray and found it to be quite acidic.  So, I drizzled some honey over everything before putting back into the oven to finish off the final half an hour of roasting (with the aluminium foil removed) to (hopefully) instigate some nice charring on the chicken, vegetables and lime.

This is what it looked like after half an hour at a higher temperature of 200°C.  There was an uneven char on my chicken and that's because of the uneven drizzling of honey (my bad)...the more honey, the more caramelisation!  There was some charring on the potatoes but very little on the corn (even after it has been rubbed with butter).

Time to plate up....and here's my Slow Roasted Chicken with Lime!  It didn't quite turn out as good as I had hoped, so I'm going to critique my own cooking like how I would a dish I ate....haha! :D

The chicken leg certainly yielded tender meat, just not as moist as the usual roast chicken I make with a shorter cooking time.  Though the meat is a tad on the drier side, the lime and cooking juices helped moisten the chicken somewhat.  The chicken skin had some uneven charring (but that was my fault) and didn't quite develop a nice crisp (maybe I need to rub it with more olive oil).

The potatoes were soft to the bite and also got some charred edges.  It just didn't have crispy edges as the potatoes were not parboiled and fluffed before going into the oven.  Still, it was the best thing on the plate for me.  The carrots weren't as soft as the potatoes but still edible.  As for the corn on the cob, it was hard and inedible as the last half an hour of (open) cooking (with aluminium foil removed) dried it up (which you can clearly see from the pic where the kernels have pulled away from the cob).  So, if you want a juicy corn, I suggest you take it out after the first hour of (covered) cooking when it was possibly still bursting with juices.

As for the charred limes, it was bitter alright when you tried to bite into it....and mine wasn't even overly charred!  I've been served charred lemons in desserts (probably more for decoration) and charred limes in salads before (for juicing)...I think the charring intensifies the flavour just a bit.  Come to think of it, would anyone want to eat charred limes (or lemons) or does it taste any good in the first place?  As for the charred limes (or lemons), I think I'll leave it just for its juice (in future), not for eating! >.<

As for the lime and cooking juices (which I drizzled over the chicken and vegetables), although it did add a citrusy flavour to the dish, it was a bit acidic and I did detect a very faint hint of bitterness in the sauce as well.  Luckily, it wasn't as obvious because of the honey I added.

Looking back, would I roast my chicken this way again?  Probably not...but I would certainly roast sturdier vegetables this way (if I don't want to do the extra step of parboiling them first but I need to cut the carrots smaller than the potatoes so that they soften at the same time).  I'll just introduce the chicken to the root vegetables later and stick to roasting chicken legs my usual way...in half an hour at a higher temperature for juicier and moister meat.  And I definitely won't be charring any more limes or lemons for eating!  Maybe not even for marinating chicken (unless it's well balanced out with honey) coz the end result is just too acidic.

Serves 1 (as a forgettable meal)