Chicken-Roasted Root Veggies

While it’s not a requirement to roast vegetables beneath a whole chicken, why wouldn’t you? Then when your vegetable are done cooking, you get to eat them with chicken.

We spiced these roasted veggies up by fermenting whole radishes in sweet corn vinegar for a few days before adding them to freshly chopped carrots, onions, and potatoes. They add a bright note mixed in with all of the other comforting schmaltzy goodness that this recipe offers. This particular batch was cooked under a whole mess of chicken thighs.

Ingredients

for radish ferment
12-15 small radishes (cleaned, tops and bottoms sliced off)
3 TBSP MadHouse Vinegar Sweet Corn Vinegar
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
Pint jar

For Vegetable Mix:
1 large onion (yellow, white, or sweet), rough chopped
4 large carrots (peeled and chopped into inch-long chunks)
8-10 small yukon potatoes (chopped into inch chunks)
1 4-6 lb chicken or 8 chicken thighs
2 tsp sea salt
2 TBSP olive oil
Salt and Pepper, to taste

Instructions

Fermenting Radishes
Mix 3 tablespoons vinegar with 1 teaspoon salt and a 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar in a pint jar. Place cleaned radishes into jar. Top off jar with water, screw top on firmly, and shake to mix. Store on countertop for 3-5 days prior to roasting.

Roasting vegetables
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Rough chop all of the veggies into 1 inch pieces. Place all in a large roasting pan. Pour olive oil over veggies and sprinkle with salt and some pepper. Squish around with your hands to make sure they all get nicely covered. Drain the radishes well and mix them in with the rest of the vegetables.

We don’t want to tell you how to cook your chicken, because you probably have a preferred method. Whatever that method is, do that. Season your chicken inside and out, stuff it with whatever you like, rub some butter on it and put it on top of the vegetables. Slide it all in the oven and forget about it until it’s cooked as long as it should: Rule of thumb we use is 20 minutes per pound plus an extra 20 minutes for good measure.

If you’re the gravy making type. Do it. The gravy is chicken gravy but there are lovely notes of all of those carmelized veggies too. Delicious!