One thing I forgot to mention about the Whole30 is that after the 30 days you are supposed to gradually reintroduce the foods that you've been abstaining from back into your diet. This will tell you how the different types of food affect your body. However, I do not plan on becoming lactose intolerant or developing a gluten allergy within 30 days. I'm a whole milk drinker and bread lover and nothing can change that! Right?
Today, I want to talk about the first recipe I made on the Whole30: Butterflied Chicken by @clean_eating_journal.
Recipe as found on the Whole30 website:
3 large carrots, peeled and chopped into 1″ chunks
3 medium onions (white, red, or a medley of both)coarsely chopped
3-4 sweet potatoes peeled and chopped into large chunks
6 garlic cloves, crushed and peeled
Coarse salt + pepper
1 orange
1 whole chicken
1 Tbsp fresh or dry thyme
4 Tbsp avocado oil or ghee
1 lemon
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Fill the bottom of an oven safe high-rimmed dish with onions, carrots, sweet potatoes. Add a dash of salt + pepper, and 4 crushed garlic cloves. Slice half of the orange into rings, peel, place on top of the vegetables. Discard the peels. Butterfly the chicken by removing the backbone with a sharp knife or kitchen shears. Lay the chicken skin side up on your work surface, and apply firm pressure with your hands to flatten it. Rub the chicken with the 2 remaining garlic cloves, salt, pepper and thyme. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables. Squeeze lemon and the remaining half of the orange over the chicken. Drizzle oil or ghee over the chicken and vegetables. Cook for 1 hour, or until done.
While doing my paleo research I read that cooking a whole chicken can provide meat for up to 10 meals, so that was my main inspiration for trying out this recipe. I had a whole line up of chicken recipes I wanted to try and this seemed like the easiest way to get started.
First of all, when cooking an entire chicken, make sure it's completley defrosted. Otherwise you will end up with an icepick and a stick of dynamite up the chicken's you-know-what trying to get hack away at a solid chuck of ice. Tip: Apparently, this takes more than one day so plan accordingly.
To butterfly a chicken (I had to look this up on youtube) you hold the tail and use kitchen sheers to cut up either side of the backbone, removing the bone. Then the guy on the video removed the breastbone or keelbone by some act of wizardy that I failed to duplicate. Good luck. Smash the chicken down, put it over the veggies and pop it in the oven.
Bad News: My chicken cooked unevenly, I had to cut some off and put it back in the oven, and it took much longer than an hour. This made the vegetables a little soggier than they were supposed to be.
Good News: It tasted alright, the skin was pretty good, and I was able to save quite a bit of chicken from it.
More Bad News: The chicken I saved tastes funny and kind of ruins the dishes I use it in. I don't know if this is a result of the chicken being freezer burnt or of not waiting til it defrosted all the way. I'm guessing it's my fault and not the recipe's.
All in all I'm calling this recipe a Sucess, though a small one, because I learned how to butterfly and cook a whole chicken and it gave me a lot of leftovers.
Honestly, how do people eat paleo all the time?
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