Garlic Roasted Chicken

Way back in the day, back when I was dieting all the time, my husband and I bought a Weight Watchers cookbook at Costco. It has sat, mostly unused, on our shelf for some time. This weekend before grocery shopping, we decided to get down on those cookbooks and make some different things for the week. My husband went to the Weight Watchers book and found a surprising number of recipes that sounded tasty. Turns out most of them are Weight Watchers because the serving sizes are tiny and you use lower fat dairy products.

One of these recipes was for a whole roasted chicken, something we’ve wanted to do for some time now - mostly since we got our roasting pan from our wedding registry. I love cooking with my husband. It goes by so much faster and it’s fun. We skipped the gravy part.

Garlic Roasted Chicken with Gravy from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook:

Makes 4 servings

1 (3½-pound) chicken (ours was closer to 4)
1 lemon, halved
1 onion, halved
4 fresh rosemary sprigs
4 fresh thyme sprigs
6 garlic cloves (ha! More like 12 cloves)
1 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees; spray the rack of a roasting pan with nonstick spray. Remove the chicken giblets and neck from the body cavity; refrigerate or freeze for another use. Rinse the chicken under cold running water inside and out; pat dry.



Place the lemon, onion, rosemary, thyme, and all of the garlic in the body cavity. Part of our onion fell out. There’s not that much room in there! Place the chicken, breast-side up, on the rack in the roasting pan. Roast 30 minutes; pour the broth and lemon juice over the chicken. Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees. Roast, basting frequently, until cooked through and the juices run clear when the thigh is pierced in the thickest part, a thermometer inserted in the thigh registers 180 degrees, about 1 hour longer. Ours took more time as it was a bigger chicken. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board; let stand 15 minutes

Remove the lemon, onion, and herbs from the cavity and discard; carve the chicken. Their final and obviously very WW direction is to remove the skin before eating. I didn’t to this and it tasted delicious.



It was moist and delicious. It probably could’ve used a bit more garlic though.