Rosemary Sage Roasted Chicken Breast with Root Veg. and Stuffing

As the weather is getting colder, and the air gets nippy… I had a hankering for a comforting roasted chicken, but didn’t feel like the whole roasted bird thing. So, after wandering the aisles of my local grocery store, I figured I would make roasted chicken breasts instead. They’re leaner, meaner and the sale that the store was having was good for my budget. Hence, I bought a pack of 4 along with 2 potted cilantro plants, a load of root vegetables: parsnip, carrot, yams, dollar bag of mushrooms (ones that were slightly not perfect), along with other heavy things that made me glad I had my handy dandy big canvas bag. Once I lugged home a heavy load, I snipped some fresh rosemary from the garden, grabbed some garlic and got to it. At this point, I had an idea of what I wanted but didn’t really know what to do with it. I just grabbed some ingredients as I went along, had my camera with me to document the process, and wrote down what came of it in the end. Hope you like it.
Final Product:

I ended up having my lunch outside just as the sun broke through the clouds and my cats decided to join me! Awww… look at them, they’re so cute.
 

Ingredients:
2 small to medium yams, peeled and roughly chopped to 1 inch pieces
3 small carrots, cut into 1 inch medallions
1 parsnip, peeled and roughly chopped to 1 inch pieces
a few little Yukon gold potatoes, quartered
4 skin on, bone-in chicken breasts (you can go boneless, the sale was for bone-in)
1/2 large onion, roughly chopped
5 cloves of garlic
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 Tbsp ground sage
1 tsp whole peppercorns
4 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup chicken stock
salt and pepper
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Peel Yams and roughly cut into 1 inch pieces.

3. Cut the top off the parsnip, peel and cut like the yams

4. Cut onion into a rough chop, in 1 inch sections

5. Cut Carrots into 1 inch medallions, and quarter the Yukon Gold potatoes.

6. Peel 4 cloves of garlic and take the stem off 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary. Reserve the leaves from one sprig for later. Roughly chop the cloves and rosemary.
 
7. Put garlic, rosemary and 10 (or around  1 tsp) whole black peppercorns into a mortar and pestle. This will release the flavour of the rosemary by bruising it, and the cloves of garlic will be pulverized. Relieve your stresses from work or what have you, and pound the mixture into a coarse mix.
 
8. Add ground sage and about 2 Tbsp of Olive Oil to the rosemary garlic mixture and rub it all over the chicken breasts with your hands, lifting up the skin away from the meat to get it under the skin and all over. Wash your hands then season with salt and a little ground pepper.

9. Get a cast iron pan (or any oven safe pan) really hot and add 2 Tbsp of Olive oil. Make sure the oil in the pan is completely distributed then place the chicken breasts skin side down with tongs. This is to sear the outside of the chicken to seal in the juices and to crisp the skin. Rotate the breasts around to get all sides browned. Take out of the pan and set chicken breasts aside. Wash your cutting board thoroughly with soap and hot water.

10. Deglaze the pan with 1/2 cup white wine to get all stuck on chicken pieces and browned bits lifted off the pan. This is all flavour and you don’t want it to be burned into the pan.

11. Add all vegetables into the pan to partially cook and brown. Add chicken stock. Stir and cook for 5 minutes.

12. Arrange chicken breasts back on top of the vegetables and sprinkle with the reserved rosemary. Place in preheated oven and roast for 20 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the chicken breasts. Check the vegetables by poking it with a fork, and if the fork goes in but with a little resistance, then the vegetables are done to be soft with a little bite. Poke the chicken breast at it’s thickest point, and if the juices run clear, then the chicken’s done too.
In the mean time, when you have just stuck the pan into the oven, start on the stuffing.