BLW-Friendly Recipe: Roast Chicken

I said before that  with BLW, there's no such thing as baby food. You simply share with baby parts of your meal that are suitable. When I'm being my usual lazy self, this means TYB eats whatever side dish of veggies I have whipped up to give some semblance of healthfulness (if there is such a word) to our typically sinful meals. When I'm feeling a bit more creative, or extra guilty for our less-than-wholesome food choices, I make an effort to prepare a BLW-friendly entree.

So here's a super easy dish that the whole family can enjoy, loosely based on a recipe from the BLW Cookbook:

INGREDIENTS
1 whole organic chicken (about 1kg)
1 head of garlic smashed, unpeeled
rosemary
bay leaf
1 lemon
ground black pepper
olive oil

Clean and wash the chicken thoroughly. Pat dry with a paper towel. Sprinkle rosemary and pepper all over the chicken, including the inside. Pierce lemon with a fork and stuff inside the cavity, together with garlic and bay leaf. Splash with olive oil. Preheat turbo broiler at 150°C for 10-15 minutes. Carefully place chicken on the cooking rack, and let cook for about 20 minutes, or until it's crispy and golden.

I made some roasted carrots to go with the chicken. I just doused them with olive oil and threw it in to cook with the bird. They came out a bit darker than I planned because I forgot to take them out on time, but they turned out surprisingly sweet and yummy.

As you may have noticed, there is no salt in the recipe. That's because babies' kidneys cannot process a high amount of salt, so it's best never to add it to anything baby might eat. Besides, too much salt is bad, even for adults.

Okay, hypocrite mode OFF: I added a bit of Knorr seasoning to my chicken, while TYD added a dash of table salt to his portion.

But honestly, ever since I started cooking for baby, I have been better able to enjoy the natural taste of food without adding salt. We even buy our butter unsalted now. In this dish though, it helped that the chicken I used was organic. It tasted very chickeny, but not malansa at all. It was actually quite yummy and more tender than I expected.

TYB always gets the breast part, just because it's easier to break into BLW-prescribed strips. She doesn't have teeth yet, so she just sucks all the juices from the meat. She seemed to enjoy it: