It’s the season for comfort food, so whip out your soup pots and casserole dishes for some cozy dinners to come. We all have our go-to dishes to keep the family warm and cozy on cold nights, and Katie Lee Biegel’s picks are favorites of our editors, too.
On a recent episode of her new podcast Katie Lee Biegel and Everything on the Table, Food Network The star spoke about a dinner her husband repeatedly requests.
“What’s the one dish you cook that people request? Well, in our house, it’s roast chicken with croutons,” Biegel said in an exclusive Q&A. “Ryan is crazy about it. It was one of the first dishes I made for him when we started dating.”
Our editors completely agree with Biegel and her husband that roast chicken is a great dinner. Our senior editor, Megan Ginsburg, makes it every week as an easy meal.
“Roast chicken is one of my favorite dishes to make when the weather cools down,” Ginsburg says. “With its crisp skin and tender meat, it’s so comforting and can be paired with any cold-weather side dish, from mashed potatoes to roasted Brussels sprouts.”
Biegel has his own delicious side dishes that he likes to make with chicken.
“Take a baguette, slice it, butter it, and put it buttered side down in the bottom of a cast iron skillet,” she explains. “Season a chicken, a whole chicken, put it on top of the baguette slices, and roast it. Then all the fat from the chicken will soak into the bread, and it’ll be so tasty when it’s toasted.” Our deputy editor, Carolyn Mulcoun, also loves incorporating similar tasty hacks into her roasting routine.
“A few years ago I tried a recipe where I roasted chicken on bread cubes and it was so good I’ve been doing it ever since,” Malkoon says. “Really, whatever you put under the chicken while it’s roasting makes it taste even better. I’ve even roasted chicken with chunks of root vegetables under it and they’re amazing!”
Our assistant cooking editor, Alex Law, also likes pairing both bread and veggies with a roast dinner, saying, “Roasting chicken with potatoes, onions, and carrots makes a quick pan dinner. But what I love most about roasting a chicken are all the great juices that get left in the pan. When I roast a chicken, I make sure to have a sturdy piece of bread on hand as well to sop up the juices.”
Serve the chicken with some vegetables for extra fiber. Biegel likes to serve the chicken and bread with a fresh green salad. Plus, making a roast chicken early in the week gives you an easy protein to add to meals throughout the week, whether it’s sandwiches, one-pot pastas, or an easy chicken salad. Consider adding a whole chicken to your shopping list.
