Lemon, sage and garlic roast chicken

I picked up two frying chickens from Hopcott's on Sunday and as I did not know how many were coming for dinner I decided to cook them both. I have really been enjoying my spit roast on the barbecue this summer, but I wanted to do something a little different from my usual spice rub.

I have a lot of very healthy sage in the garden and sage goes so well with chicken I decided to use that along with some garlic and a couple of lemons.

I pulled the skin away from the flesh on the breast and pushed in some sprigs of sage and finely sliced garlic.  I then squeezed a lemon over each bird and placed the cut halves along with a sprig of sage in each cavity.

Then I sprinkled them salt and trussed them and threaded them on to the spit.

Ready to roll

I put a roasting tray under the chickens so that all the juices fell in to it instead of all over the barbecue.

Partially cooked

I roasted these two birds for about 1 and 1/2 hours and they were absolutely beautiful looking and so tender from being spit roast.

The juices that had fallen in to the roasting tin just had to be poured into a gravy separator to remove the fat and then served in a small jug with the chicken.

I served this with a salad of cucumber, tomatoes and fresh herbs tossed in vinegar and olive, and green beans tossed in a little soy sauce in a frying pan after they were cooked.

There ended up only being 5 of us for dinner, so one of the chickens has been providing wonderful lunch material.

One more picture of the beautiful chicken