Sunday Family Dinner
Sunday family dinner is often done French style in our household: a whole roast chicken. This is what the French typically eat for their main Sunday meal; and it’s often what I serve at home on a Sunday evening at least once a month. Sunday family dinner is sacred in our household. It’s usually the only day of the week that the entire family can be counted on to be home, not working, with homework finished, and all sports practices and games completed. We sit together in a relaxed atmosphere, eat a well balanced meal and plan for the busy week ahead.
I love this meal. It’s simple, delicious, and comforting. Paleo comfort food for sure.
My favorite recipe for roast chicken comes from my favorite cookbook: Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table. It’s called Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux (“Les Paresseux” means “the lazy” in French). The method is fantastically French and simple (thus, for the lazy). Basically you rub a whole chicken with olive oil or butter, season it with salt and pepper, stuff it with herbs and garlic and roast it on top of a couple of pieces of bread in a Dutch oven along with more garlic, herbs and white wine. Half way through the 90 minute cook, you add seasoned potatoes, carrots and shallots. The result is simple, delicious and comforting.
I make only three minor alterations to Dorie’s recipe to make it Paleo. I use only olive oil (no butter alternative for greasing the bird) and I use one of my day-old paleo bagels or other paleo bread as the base for the chicken instead of bread or baguette (because you are definitely going to want to eat it at the end of the day). Finally, I’ve been replacing the potatoes with Japanese sweet potatoes. There is no need otherwise to fiddle with perfection. This is a simple, straightforward dish and classic method for preparing a roast chicken. Go get your copy of her cookbook today and make this meal for your Sunday family dinner next week.
Around My French Table
While you will find this recipe republished online, I have not included it here as I’ve not received permission to republish it. I’d encourage you to buy her cookbook instead as the author requests. And without your own copy of the entire cookbook, you will miss out on the hundreds of other incredible recipes it contains. I’m determined to work my way through every single recipe in this cookbook – but I keep remaking this dish again and again for our Sunday family dinner so it’s going to take me awhile to get through the other chicken dishes.
I’m really sorry I missed out on French Fridays with Dorie – a group organized by Dorie to make all the recipes in the book together. Unfortunately, they finished up in 2015 after starting in 2010, so I guess it’s okay if it takes me a few more years to get through it. Go buy yourself your own copy today. You won’t regret it.
You will find it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Method: Lid On or Off?
When falling in love with this dish, I always cooked it with the lid on – which I guess was wrong. I never thought about it because when it called for a Dutch oven, I reached my 7.25 quart Le Creuset – and as she noted that by using a Dutch oven, “there are no splatters” – to me that said “lid on” and that’s how I’ve always made it. I’m not sure that’s wrong actually.
Some say with the lid on, the vegetables and bread are too soggy and the chicken not crisp. In my experience, the chicken still comes out good with the lid on. The vegetables are soft, moist and delicious, and the bread is definitely not soggy. Recently, I took off the lid for the final twenty minutes and the results were perfect. It was the perfect blend of moist and char on the chicken and the vegetables. The main photo is from this Sunday family dinner. (I also recently made it with the lid off for the entire time… the top of the skin got a bit too crisp and the liquid dried up and I had to add more twice). You may have to experiment to see what works best for you with your own oven and cookware.
I’m hoping Dorie will clarify which method she prefers. I’ll you know what I learn.