This Bundt Pan Chicken Dish Looks Wacky to Prepare But Tastes Amazing

What started out as an epic fight with the contents of my kitchen cupboards turned into a delicious experiment. As I was attempting corral too many baking pans into too small a space, I suddenly looked at my collection of tube pans and thought, hey, why don’t I use one of these to roast a chicken?

Tube - or Bundt - pans, with their central cones, are vastly superior to the popular beer can chicken roasting method because you don’t need to wrassle that hot cooked bird off a can filled with scalding liquid when it’s time to serve it up. As a huge added bonus, you put vegetables in the bottom of the pan and have them roast away, basted automatically by the chicken’s delicious juices. At our house, we call it Sunday Chicken after the scrumptious roasted delights we enjoyed at Parisian farmers’ markets; you can call it a magical meal.

Beer Can Chicken in a Bundt Pan

Ingredients:

3 cloves garlic, halved lengthwise
1 large carrot, chopped into one inch pieces
1 onion, chopped into one inch pieces
1/2 pound small potatoes, chopped into one inch pieces
1/2 medium zucchini, chopped into one inch pieces
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
A few sprigs fresh thyme
1 three to four pound chicken
1/2 lemon
1/4 cup chicken broth

Directions:

• Remove oven’s middle rack and preheat oven to 425F.
   
• Cover the central hole of the Bundt or tube pan with heavy duty foil.

• Drizzle a little olive oil in the bottom of the pan and use a pastry brush or your fingertips to spread it around.
   
• Scatter the vegetables into the Bundt pan, then drizzle with a little more olive oil and season with salt and pepper. With a spoon or your fingers, toss the vegetables to coat evenly with oil, then scatter several sprigs of fresh thyme on top of the vegetables.

• Rinse chicken, removing gizzards or neck from the cavity. Pat chicken dry with paper towels. Rub olive oil all over the skin of the chicken, then season generously with salt and pepper plus dried or fresh thyme leaves. Put the lemon half and a few sprigs of thyme inside the chicken’s cavity then place the chicken over the ‘post’ or covered hole of the Bundt pan.

• Put pan in preheated oven and after 30 minutes, drizzle the chicken stock over the vegetables.
   
• Bake until the chicken is cooked through (165F in the thickest part of the breast) and skin is golden, about 1 to 1 ½ hours, depending upon the size of the chicken.  Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes before carving.

• Remove roasted vegetables to a serving platter and pour pan juices into a jug to pass at the table. Slice chicken and serve.

Serves 4.

IMAGE SOURCES: COURTESY OF PAULA ROY

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