I was a bit confused by the sheer number of roast chicken recipes that Ina gets credited for. In the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, her first, there is a Perfect Roast Chicken recipe that makes a gravy at the end. That's the one I made.
But then I happened on a video from Food Network that was Perfect Roast Chicken with fennel and other vegetables - no gravy. Ina says her Engagement Roast Chicken recipe was inspired by a recipe from Glamour, Engagement Chicken. She has a skillet-roasted lemon chicken too. It doesn't seem to matter which recipe you make - you're gonna get married regardless if you keep playing around. Proceed with caution.
This engagement chicken phenomenon has always flummoxed me as roast chicken would almost be the last thing I made while fishing for a proposal. It doesn't even have bacon in the recipe. But maybe it's because I'm from the Gulf Coast where blackened surf and turf with a rich sauce for topping is the height of romanticism, followed closely by any Italian dish with lots of cheese. And anything with bacon.
I, however, was already married when I tried the recipe. And trying to do too many things at once. And burnt the hell out of the vegetables in the pan. (It was not really my fault. The timer did not go off for some reason. Let's just say there was NO gravy that could be made from the charred onions.) Even after cooking the chicken 15 minutes longer than instructed, the chicken was fabulous. The vegetables not so much. I'm honestly not sure the veggies would not have been burnt regardless, though, as 425 for 1 1/2 hours is a lot of roasting for carrots and potatoes.
For my fellow former English majors, I did check the title. I would have sworn it should be roasted chicken, but Google swears that roasting is a verb and "roast chicken" is the noun that is later served.
In her Engagement Roast Chicken recipe, she counsels to roast the chicken in a small pan or the onions will burn. (This advice was not given in the cookbook.) She also uses olive oil in this recipe after insisting in the video above that butter was the preferred fat for roast chicken. Her stock is made with wine instead of chicken stock - maybe that's where the proposal begins. I mean, the bottle is already open...
Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. Meghan and Prince Harry. Ina and Jeffrey. Your chances are good. If you are looking for a proposal this Valentine's Day, whip out the roasting pan. And even if you're not, as Emily points out, "Who doesn't love a roast chicken?"
