The act of roasting chicken can be good for many things.  Some say it’s good for your love life.  Others for sharing with friends.  For me, roasting a chicken is simply dinner.  It’s dinner that is low-stress, and it’s dinner that is sure to create leftovers with little extra effort.  It can even be thought of as healthy; but most of all, it’s flavorful and satisfying in that “catch the flavors wafting around as you walk in the door and instantly be transported  back in time to memories of family get-togethers” kind of way.

This roast chicken was also an experiment.  My toaster oven supposedly came with a rotisserie setup, and I wanted to see if it actually worked.  Well, I must have the world’s most awesome toaster oven, because we got the chicken onto the spit  successfully, and it actually rotated in the oven! I say “we” because my husband helped – he was convinced the just-marinated chicken might slip out of my hands and slide across the floor of the kitchen like it was practicing ice skating for the next Olympics – no one wants that kind of champion title for their dinner!  This bird was about at the limit for my little oven though, coming in at about 1.7 kg it just barely cleared the bottom.

Ah yes, the marinade….this is one I will definitely be making again.  So simple and easy, completely effortless really.  If I had found my juicer this would have been even easier – but I always seem to be losing things (ha don’t ask me how many times I’ve lost my keys!), and after about 4 minutes 37 seconds of searching decided at that point it would just be faster to squeeze the oranges by hand.  Sweet Spanish oranges, I hope you never go out of season because you taste so much better than your 2 CHF/kg price tag would lead one to believe!  Sweet oranges and honey, salty tamari, and zing from chives and garlic made for quite the marinade/glaze on this chicken. So much honey made the sauce gooey and helped it stick to the chicken while it was roasting, and we ended up with an aroma throughout our home that was just irresistible.  Letting it rest after coming out of the oven was simply torture!

Speaking of honey, have you checked out the round up from the Blogger Secret Ingredient event that I hosted this past week?  There were some awesomely diverse and scrumptious entries, all using honey – from condiments to desserts, there’s a dish for just about anything!

Also submitted to – Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays