This chicken turned out so amazing. The arugula pesto with the walnuts and the roasted garlic penetrated the skin of the chicken so every bite had a bright pop of flavor, a hint of deep, roasted garlic flavor and not to mention the pop of acid from the citrus.
Meyer Lemons can be found in stores right now and they are one of my favorites. They're not as tart as a normal lemon, and these were sumo lemons, so they took on a bit of an orange flavor. Can't find them? Use regular lemons or naval oranges would work well. This recipe is so versatile. Plus it turns out beautifully, the chicken is juicy and delicious, the skin is to die for and with a bit of plan-ahead preparation, it's easy.
How to Make Meyer Lemon Roasted Chicken:
To get started, you need a 24 hour lead time. Buy a little container of buttermilk and soak the chicken in buttermilk. This isn't a necessary step, but it really leaves the chicken so juicy. I pretty much always do this with thighs, cheaper cuts of meat (drumsticks) and sometimes if I'm feeling fancy, whole roasting chickens.
In the meantime, roast up a whole head of garlic. This sounds like a lot of garlic but I can ensure you it's not. The roasting process leaves the garlic with this deep flavor that's rich and almost nutty, not at all pungent and overpowering. To do this, simply wrap up a bulb of garlic that has had the top cut off with aluminum foil, drizzle olive oil and salt and pepper on it, then wrap it up like a baseball and put it into the oven in an oven-safe dish or baking sheet. At 425°, roast the garlic for about an hour. Pull it from the oven, let it cool, unwrap it, and pushing from the bottom of the bulb, push the garlic cloves out into the blender.
From here you can add the rest of the ingredients to make the Arugula Pesto. Last step is toasting up the walnuts to ensure a rich nuttiness to the pesto that I highly recommend. Blend it up and the pesto is done!
To get the chicken going, preheat the oven to 400° and rinse the buttermilk off the chicken and pat dry. With a bit of spray oil or melted butter, get the chicken coated and sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper on it. Place into the roasting rack and cover the chicken generously with the pesto.
In the meantime, chop up the lemons, stuff the chicken with them and add some salt and pepper to the cavity so that all of the meat is appropriately seasoned.
Add 1 cup of water and the remaining lemons to the bottom of the roasting rack. This will create juice to baste the chicken with throughout the cooking process.
That's it! Now it's time to cook. At 400°, cook for one hour. Baste a few times during this time to ensure the skin crisps up nicely. Then, lower the temperature to 350° to finish cooking for about 20-30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let the chicken rest before serving. Enjoy!! We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
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