Roast chicken is another one of those go-to comfort meals you can count on for ease, great taste, and best of all—leftovers. We like to make ours more savoury, using fresh herbs from our garden with olive oil.

There’s nothing like the scent of roast chicken from your kitchen oven during colder months. But in summer, it’s time to take advantage of your BBQ, or better yet, a charcoal grill for a more smoky flavour. Don’t be surprised if you make the neighbours envious.

Since you have the smoker going, you can also grill up some lovely sides to accompany the chicken. Ralph made sliced potatoes wedges dug fresh from our garden, adding them to the pan with the collected juice from the chicken.

Ingredients:

• 1 Whole chicken (ours was 2kg), ideally from a butcher and free-range
• Big handful of herbs, chopped (Ralph used sage, rosemary, thyme, chives, and Vietnamese coriander)
• Olive oil (enough to cover the herbs – see pic)
• Salt and pepper QB

Instructions:

1. Prepare and heat your charcoal grill.
2. Ralph prefers to remove the rubber band that comes with the chicken we buy from the farmer’s market and truss it instead with kitchen twine. If you choose to do the same, truss first the legs, then breast, and finish with tucking in the wings (see pictures).
3. Mix olive oil and herbs together. Spread all over chicken (see video).
4. Place chicken on the grill breast-side down with pan underneath to maximize tenderness from juice.
5. Keep the vents open to ensure the highest heat.
6. After a ½ hour of grilling, add some mesquite to coals.
7. Grill until the breast reaches 165 °F (73.9 °C)—ours took 2 hours.

Tips:

1. Invest in stainless steel grill pans that you can re-use instead of using disposable aluminum pans.
2. This makes great leftovers. If you have room, make a bigger chicken and freeze for future quick meals such as Marion’s Chicken Sloppy Joes on Croissants.