Low Carb Cooking Class! -- Roasted Chicken & Veg

Just when you thought my blog was becoming nothing but rants about ketogenic diets…

It’s time for another installment of Low Carb Cooking Class!

We’ve covered lots of ground so far in this series on very simple and easy cooking for low carbers like myself, who want to eat delicious, homemade low carb foods, but who are not about to spend a fortune on almond or coconut flour, erythritol, coconut aminos, and all sorts of other esoteric ingredients that are absolutely not required in order to put a nutritious and yummy low carb meal together. Here’s the territory we’ve visited so far: 

• Introduction to this series and why I'm writing it

• Stocking your kitchen with low carb staples in order to make all of this a breeze

• How to season food to give things different flavors even when you use the same main proteins and vegetables (i.e., make the same food taste totally different so you don't get bored)

• Tips for cooking in bulk and in advance

• Using salt, heat, and acids to up your cooking game

• Roasting meat and vegetables together in one baking dish -- possibly the easiest way to get real food on the table that doesn’t involve opening a can of tuna or calling for takeout.

To be honest, I feel kind of silly writing blog posts that boil down to, “brown ground meat in a skillet with some onions and zucchini, and add some salt.” I mean, really? There are people who don’t know how to cook low carb like this? But maybe there are. And that’s what this series is all about—low carb cooking that is simple, easy, and above all, practical—the kind of cooking you’ll do all throughout the week, on busy nights when your kids have six different activities going on, or you get home from work and you’re ravenous, and you “don’t know what to make” for dinner.

I have a nice collection of low carb, ketogenic, and Paleo cookbooks, and I love flipping through them for the food porn (and for ideas…food ideas, not porn ideas, haha), but to be honest, I rarely make any of the dishes in them. I have no kids and no boyfriend, so in preparing food for myself, sometimes dinner is as boring simple as a can of salmon and a raw green pepper. I think we somehow got this idea that every meal has to be the stuff of legends and worthy of being posted on Instagram. (I do not post pictures to Instagram, mostly because I’m a terrible photographer, but also because no one wants to see pictures of a can of salmon and a green pepper.)

So, in the interest of keeping things simple yet delicious, today we’re going to cover something that should be a staple of basic cooking for just about everybody, whether they eat low carb or not. It’s time for roasted chicken!

Recipe: Super-Herb Chicken

Remember when I posted that recipe for compound butter not long ago? I mentioned that I tend to overbuy fresh herbs, thinking I’m going to go all culinary ninja in the kitchen and do all sorts of fantastic and impressive things with them. Once in a while that actually happens, but more often than not, the herbs sit around for a while waiting for me find something great to do with them, and before I finally do, they wilt, get soggy, and otherwise turn unusable. Well, shame on me — and not only because that’s a total waste of money, but even more so because those little green bunches pack a powerful nutritional wallop. Most of them carry more than their share of folate, vitamin K₁, vitamin C, carotenes, and iron. They’re also good for digestion—that sprig of parsley that you’ve always thought was just the chef’s way of making your plate look pretty? It’s actually a great palate cleanser and digestive aid.

Look at these. This recipe cannot possibly be bad!

Anyway, I posted the recipe for the butter first because I had saturated fat on the brain, but I had originally bought the herbs for the recipe I’m sharing today. I hesitate to even call it a “recipe,” since it involves little more than spreading herbs on a chicken breast and sticking it in the oven. But there are plenty of people in my life who think of cooking as this mystical, mysterious thing that they can’t possibly mess around with without detailed directions, so here goes.