Spicy Caribbean Flavors... and Using Up Spicy Sausage

I like roasted whole chickens. I see the rotisserrie chickens at the store all the time and think, I should just grab one of those! But they usually get old and bland after a while. I wanted something with more flavor and spice. I figured I could find some time somehow to roast a chicken. And magically, I made Caribbean-Spiced Roast Chicken with Dirty Rice yesterday.

My problem with meats that require attention (e.g. basting) and take a long time to cook (e.g. roast chicken) usually require a significant amount of time. Alas, since I am pretty obsessive about working out at Primal most days and don't get home until well past 9:00 pm, this usually nixes these kinds of dishes. I took a risk and decided to pop the chicken in the oven before going to the gym, cooking it initially on high heat, and then letting it slow cook while at the gym the rest of the way. It could have been a disaster and I could have returned to raw or burnt chicken. But it was a thing of beauty.

I took a 3 pound chicken and tied the legs up and rinsed it with cold water while I preheated the oven to 380. I brushed vegetable oil over the entire thing and then spread a spice rub all over it made of:

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground clove
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves

In retrospect, I could have used an entire teaspoon of cayenne pepper, but the 1/2 tsp was already double the spice rub recipe I had found in the first place. Regardless, the combination of sweet and spicy was perfect and amazing. Anyway, throw this on a roasting rack and let cook for 50 minutes.

During this 45 minutes, you will baste this sucker every 10 minutes or so with a mixture of two shots of rum (I used Flor de Cana which was on hand), the juice of 1 lime, and 1 TBSP sugar in the raw (or brown sugar). Then, I was ready to go to Primal, so I put a cooking stone in the bottom rack, turned off the oven and then shut it to keep the warmth in. An hour and a half later when I came back from class, I had perfectly cooked chicken, ready to eat, and still warm.

While this was baking during the first 45 minutes, I also made a improv Dirty Rice to serve the chicken with. I knew I needed something spicy enough to hold up to the chicken and wanted to incorporate vegetables and healthy carbs. I had a leftover spicy italian sausage from making chili and tortellini, so I took it out of the casing, sauteed that in a little bit of vegetable oil with half an onion, chopped roughly, 1 tsp minced garlic, and 2 sliced serrano peppers. Then I added 1 cup of long grain brown rice and sauteed for about 5 minutes to allow the rice to toast and absorb the delicious sausage drippings. About a cup of beef broth leftover from making chili and a 14.5 oz can of whole stewed tomatoes (squished by hand) also got thrown in with some black pepper and I set the whole thing to simmer until I left (about 35 minutes or so).

Much to my chagrin, since brown rice takes longer, it was not ready and I didn't have enough liquid. So I added another 1/2 cup of water, let it simmer, turned off the burner (I have electric so this was perfect which allowed my rice to keep cooking), then covered it tightly and let it do its thing while I went to the gym. It was almost perfectly cooked when I came back and still warm and happy.