Kitchen Basics: How To Roast A Chicken

It occurred to me yesterday as I was cooking dinner that I’ve never posted a roasted chicken recipe.  Since I roast a chicken for almost every big meal, this was surprising to me.  A good roast chicken is a must for any Jewish woman (along with chicken soup)- you must know how to do it, even if you don’t do it often.  I base my recipe on Ina Garten’s  (my grandmother’s was more simple- it was just chicken in a pan and roasted so I like Ina’s) and it works every time.  Since I don’t love turkey and there were only three of us eating yesterday, I roasted a chicken and even remembered to take photos to share with you….

Roasted Chicken

1 whole chicken

several carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 head of fennel

several cloves of garlic, peeled

1 head of garlic, cut in half

1 lemon, cut in half

1 stick of butter, melted

salt, pepper

Optional:  small potatoes or larger potatoes peeled and chopped, brussel sprouts, other root veggies (parsnips, turnips, etc) peeled and chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425.

Check out your chicken and make sure that you’ve taken out the gizzard, heart, etc. parts. Usually they’re in the cavity in a neat little bag. You can save them to make stock or broth if you like.  Rinse your chicken and pat dry.  Set it aside and make sure that you’ve washed your hands afterwards- never touch anything after you’ve handled raw chicken.  Get out your roasting pan.  I use this enormous one which was a wedding gift from a wonderful friend- it can hold a turkey easily and I adore it.

Get out your veggies.  I always use garlic, carrot, onion and fennel.  You can also use other root veggies as you like.  Mostly they serve as a bed for the chicken to rest on as it cooks and then soak up all the yummy chicken juices and butter and spices.  They end up carmalizing in the pan and are just delicious.  Anyway, rinse, peel and chop them so that they’re roughly the same size.  For those of you playing along at home, here’s fennel, one of my favorite strange looking veggies.

I use just the bulb part but I think that the top is so funny- sort of frilly and tickly.  Wash and then chop it into rough pieces.  It’s layered, like an onion so the pieces will look like the onion that you chop.  Fennel has a sort of black licorice taste so it’s strong but I like it.  Anyway, toss all your veggies with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and throw them into the roasting pan.

Slice the head of garlic in half lengthwise and slice the lemon in half as well.  Stuff each into the empty cavity of the chicken- I alternate, lemon/garlic/lemon/garlic.  Place your chicken on top of the veggies. 

Melt the stick of butter (yes, I know, a stick!) in a pan over low heat.  Pour the butter over your chicken.  Salt and pepper the chicken well. Wash your hands.

Bake for about an hour and fifteen minutes, or until the internal temperature is between 150-160 degrees.  Take it out and let it rest for ten minutes before attempting to carve.  Ina says to tent it with foil but I don’t always do that. Sometimes, depending on how quickly the skin is browning, I’ll cover it with foil while it’s still cooking, just to make sure it doesn’t burn.

Carve and serve on a platter with some of the yummy veggies on the side. I recently watched a foodtv special on Thanksgiving in which Alton Brown carved a turkey live! and on tv!- and now I can carve a chicken.  Far easier than I thought.

Grown Up Brunch

When I was little, my family would get together with other families for dinner or brunch or some other meal.  I’d play with the children from that family and the parents would talk. Usually it would separate out by gender but I have distinct memories of looking up and seeing all the adults around the table, chatting, laughing and watching us play.

Today, we became my parents.  It was awesome.

We had friends over for brunch, two couples, one of whom has children.  The adults (though, since it’s us, I use the term loosely) sat at the table, chatting, laughing and eating while the two older kids played.  This is what it looked like when they were done playing:

It was great.  And we had so much food!  Bagels, cream cheese and lox (we’re good Jews), yummy cookies and pastries (thanks to one couple), homemade blueberry muffins (thanks to the other couple) and a mushroom and leek quiche that I threw together so that we’d have some more protein, you know, for balance.

It really was a lovely morning and it was nice to see G. and the other child play together.  He’s the son of a good friend from high school (with whom I’d lost touch but, thanks to facebook, we’ve re-connected) and it was neat to see our children getting along.  Also a bit surreal since most days I still feel like I’m in middle school- it’s hard to believe that high school was over 15 years ago and that many of us now have children of our own.

At any rate, here’s the quiche recipe.  I find quiche quite forgiving and it can take on a number of different flavors.  It’s a great leftovers dish since you can throw almost any veggie in there and have it end up tasty.  Eggs, cream, cheese….  what’s not to like?

Leek and Mushroom Quiche

Ingredients

1/2 recipe of dough (I use the Hippo’s recipe but I add about 1-2 teaspoons of sugar for a bit of sweet)

6-9 eggs, depending on the size of your pie pan

3/4-1 cup of milk, light or heavy cream- use what you have

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1/2 – 3/4 cup leeks (sliced and cleaned)

1/2-1 cup of grated parmesan cheese (other cheeses work well, too)

Directions:

Make your dough and let it firm up in the fridge.  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Slice and clean your leek.  I make really thin slices and then separate the layers into a bowl, cover them with water and let them sit.  All the sand and dirt will sort of fall out and sink to the bottom. I actually love leeks- they’re milder than onions and sort of sweet.  I saved one leek to make potato leek soup later in the week.  I can’t wait!

Chop up your mushrooms while the leeks are soaking.

Heat a small saute pan on the stove over medium heat.  Add some olive oil and toss in the leeks (take them out of the water first).  Let them cook a bit until they’re soft and sort of translucent but not brown- maybe 5 minutes or so.

Add your mushrooms and let that cook until the mushrooms cook down (i.e. release their liquid and get smaller).  Meanwhile, crack your eggs into a large-ish bowl.

I think there's something really pretty about eggs. I know, I'm weird.

Whip them with a whisk until they’re all blended together well.

Add your cream (or whatever dairy you’re using) and some salt (and pepper if you wish).  Whip again to mix and set aside.  Then it’s time to roll out your dough.

Now, I am NOT a dough expert.  I can not crimp or flute to save my life so my crusts are always asymmetrical and sort of ragged looking.  I only started making my own pie crust in the last year or so when I realized that 1) the Hippo’s recipe was easy and did not involve lard (big debate in the pie crust world about how lard is what makes a really good, flakey, decadent pie crust which is probably true but, ick) and 2) I could make it in my food processor.  I love my food processor.  So take my rolling out advice with a grain or two of salt and find what works for you.

I roll my dough on a cutting board because I’m never sure my counters are clean enough and I am never prepared enough to clean it before I put the dough down.  Lightly flour your surface as well as your dough.

Start rolling from the center out, not from either end. I remember this from my bakery days but I’ll be damned if I can remember why- I think maybe it’s more even this way.

Flip it over and turn it 90 degrees.  Roll again, from the center.

Continue this until it is the thickness and roughly the shape that you want.  Again, mine are never symmetrical and never the correct shape.  Keep in mind that you want to work the dough as little as possible and that the more time it has to heat up the less flakey it will be- has to do with the butter melting and other food science-y stuff.  If you really want to know more, I’m sure Alton Brown can tell you. (I just watched the video link and he actually uses a ziplock bag and two pie pans which, if I had two pie pans, I might try)

I put my pretty red pie pan on top of it partly to measure and partly because it’s easier for me to get the dough into the pan.  You can be all fancy and roll the dough over your rolling-pin and then sort of drape it over the pan but I find that fancy makes holes in the dough (at least for me).

Flip it over so that the dough is on top of the pan.

Peel off your cutting board if necessary and then sort of drape the dough gently into the pan.  I press down gently to kind of tuck it into the sides and bottom.

At this point, you should make the edges look pretty.  I do not, but you should.  I just sort of leave it.

By now, your mushroom/leek mixture should be done (did you forget about it?  I hope not!).  Set it aside to let it cool for a few minutes while you grate your cheese.  I am (as well we all know if we’ve been reading along) lazy so I do mine in the mini-food processor.

Sprinkle about half of your cheese onto your crust.  It will sort of insulate it once you add the other things and make it less soggy as it bakes.

Your mushrooms and leeks should look a bit like this:

Add them on top of the cheese and sort of spread them around as evenly as you can.

Give your egg and dairy mixture another whip and then pour over.

Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top and toss into your oven.  You may want to put a baking sheet underneath, in case some of it spills over.

Let it bake for about 45 minutes to an hour.  About halfway through, I always need to cover it loosely with a bit of aluminum foil as it will be brown but still jiggley.  You want it to be firm and not wiggley in the middle.  When you take it out of the oven, let it sit for a few minutes before cutting into it, otherwise it won’t set as well.

Around here we’ll eat quiche for any of the our three meals.  It’s good both hot, room temperature and cold.  And it’s generally pretty easy to throw together last minute, too.  I’ll sometimes do a bacon cheddar cheese quiche or a sausage and other kind of cheese.  Sometimes it’s just whatever veggies I have on hand- peppers, broccoli, asparagus you name it, it can probably go into a quiche.

Enjoy with your friends and family (even if you’re not having brunch).

What Every Jewish Mother Knows Is….

how to make chicken soup, of course!  It’s a law.

Of course, you have my grandmother, who knew how to make chicken soup from scratch, and then you have my mother, who knew how to open a can of Campbell’s. You know, both work when you’re sick.  One is a whole lot more effort than the other.  But if they’re both served by a Jewish mother, than the magical medicinal properties remain.  If you’re not a Jewish mother, well, you should probably still know how to make homemade chicken soup.  It may not be quite as magical but I bet it’ll do the trick the next time you or someone you love is sick.

The problem is, of course, like any good passed-down recipe, there is no hard and fast recipe with measurements.  So I’ll give you the ballpark and you’ll experiment.  Really, it’s hard to go wrong.  Soup is very forgiving.  Plus, I’ll even give you a bonus sandwich recipe since you’ll have a lot of chicken once you’ve made the soup.

Homemade Chicken Soup

1 whole chicken or 1 whole chicken cut into parts

Several carrots, peeled and chopped (I’d say 6 large)

1 whole onion, peeled and cut into quarters

2-4 cloves of garlic, peeled

Several stalks of celery, washed and chopped (Again, maybe 6 stalks?)

2 large tomatoes, cut into quarters

Pasta, if you’d like

About ten billion cups of water.  Okay, how about 14 cups?  I use the same stockpot when I make soup and I just eyeball it.

Directions:

Wash and pat dry your chicken.  If you’re using a whole chicken, make sure to remove the gizzards and neck package that’s usually stuffed inside the cavity.  You can use this in the broth if you like but don’t forget to unwrap it.  No plastic in the soup!   Place your chicken in a big soup or stockpot and cover with the water.  Add 3 of the celery stalks, 3 of the carrots, all of the onion, all of the garlic and one of the tomatoes.  Place over medium-high heat and bring to a boil.  Once it’s boiling, turn down the heat and let it cook for, well, forever.  At least an hour.  I generally cook it for a few hours, adding water when the level gets below the chicken.  You’ll know you’re done when the meat of the chicken is coming off the bones.

Set it all aside to let it cool.  In fact, I often put it in the fridge and leave it overnight.  The chicken fat (that’s schmaltz to you Jews) will sort of (gross) congeal and it will make it easier to remove it.

Using a large spoon, skim the congealed fat off the soup.  Or at least as much of it as you can.  If you’re really intrepid, you can save it and use it when you’re making matzo balls.  If you’re like me (and unlikely to make matzo balls in the near future), put it in a bowl and then toss it in the garbage.  It’s not really good for your garbage disposal or your sink drain.

Yucky fat skimmed. And some tomatoes that got throw in there as well.

 

Once you’ve skimmed all the fat, you can reheat if your broth has sort of jellied or, if your broth is just broth, you can skip the reheating.  Remove all the chicken and as many of the vegetables as you can and put them in a bowl to cool.

The chicken and vegetables I removed before I strained my soup.

Then strain the broth through a mesh sieve and into another pot or bowl.

What was left in my sieve.

If there’s any visible fat in your broth, skim it out now.  There will be some left but that’s ok.  You just don’t want a whole lot.  Ick.

Return the broth to the heat and add the other 3 carrots, celery, and the tomato.  Return it to the heat on medium and let it slowly come to a boil.  Meanwhile, go back to your bowl of chicken and veggies.  Pick out the chicken and start to shred the meat with your fingers.  Don’t use the skin or the cartilage or the bones, just find the meat and shred it into small, soup size pieces.  Add this to the soup.  Unless you want lots and lots of chicken in your soup, you will likely have some leftover.  That’s ok, use it for the bonus chicken salad recipe below.

Let this cook for another good while- at least an hour.  Add more water if it gets too low- more than halfway down the pot.  Season to taste with salt and pepper and maybe a little bit of thyme.  Remember not to over-salt because as it cooks, it will get more salty.  The soup will be done when the veggies are tender but not mushy.

If you want to add pasta to your soup, cook it separately.  Trust me on this one.  Cook it according to the package directions and add it to the soup bowls as you serve.

I used little tiny pasta "ears"

 

Bonus Curry Chicken Salad Recipe

Ingredients

Leftover chicken from the soup

mayonnaise

red onion (to taste, I only used about 1 teaspoon)

Curry power (to taste, I used between 1 and 2 teaspoons)

1-2 stalks of celery, chopped

salt, pepper

bread, for making the sandwich

Directions
Shred the chicken and put it into a large bowl.

Slice your red onion very thinly and add to the bowl.

I didn't even use all of this onion.

Add the celery and the curry powder. 

Add mayo to taste (I think I used maybe 3-5 tablespoons), it will depend on both your taste buds and how much chicken you have.  Sometimes I’ll add some sliced grapes and walnuts or cranberries.  But it’s tasty even without those additions.

Spread on toast and serve with the soup.  Yum.

Take Two

So, at one point (and maybe still now) meal-planning and cooking for two dishes at once was all the rage.  For those of you who watched Food Network when they still had cooking shows, you might remember Quick Fix Meals where the host, Robin Miller, made several meals at once by doing all the prep work at the same time.  Or the current one by a woman I once liked but now can not stand, Rachel Ray’s Week In A Day.  Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a brilliant idea.  I get asked all the time about how I manage to cook dinner every night (usually by friends that don’t cook) and the truth is, the week in a day concept is way too much planning for me.

But sometimes, I do re-use leftovers.  Does that count?  Here’s an example.  Remember the sauce I posted about last week (click here)?  A few nights ago I re-purposed the leftover sauce.  In a way, this recipe is going to show you how I generally cook- I know a few techniques and I throw them together along with whatever happens to be in my fridge at the time.

Chinese Chicken Using Grandma’s Leftover Sauce Which Was Good For London Broil Or Chicken

Ingredients

About a pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1/4 cup cornstarch

1 cup sauce

2-3 Tablespoons of sesame oil

1/2-1 cup chicken broth

Leftover or fresh green beans

Rice (to serve)

Directions

Chop up your chicken into bite sized pieces.

Place the cornstarch in a large bowl, or at least one large enough to hold the chicken.

Add the chicken and toss to coat.

I place another bowl over and shake which can be messy so if you do it that way, make sure to do it over the sink.

Over medium high, heat about two tablespoons of sesame oil in a wok or large saute pan.

Take the chicken out and shake off the excess cornstarch before placing it into the heated oil. 

Let them brown up a bit- not cook all the way through, but get the outsides toasty.  Add the leftover sauce which should be rather thick since it’s been in the fridge. 

Stir and toss to coat the chicken.  At this point, I added a few splashes of chicken broth to help loosen up the sauce. 

Turn the heat down slightly and let that cook.  Stir once in a while so it doesn’t burn on the bottom.  Meanwhile, chop up your green beans.  I think you could use broccoli or another green veg in this as well- maybe not spinach but chinese broccoli might be nice.  Probably not peas.

Check on your chicken.  If the sauce is too thick, thin it out with some chicken broth or water- I used water for the second thinning since it was salty to start with and I was afraid more chicken broth might make it even more so. 

Continue cooking until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce is the desired consistency.  Throw the green beans in at the last minute to heat through (if they’re previously cooked as mine were- if they’re raw, make sure to put them in about three to four minutes before it’s done so that they have time to soften up a bit).

Serve over rice.  I had leftover brown rice so I used that.

Kitchen Basics: White Sauce (aka Bechamel)

I realized this afternoon, as I was whipping up a quick cheese sauce for pasta that I make “white sauce” all the time.  It’s the basis for so many of the things I make that I feel like it’s something I should pass on to others.  Plus, I first learned to make it in Israel so that covers the “say more about Israel” clamor I’ve been getting.  (You know, from all four of my fans…love you guys!!)

When I lived in Israel I lived on a kibbutz.  It was a small kibbutz, about 70 families.  There were about 15-20 volunteers and factory workers at any given time.  We worked all over the kibbutz- landscaping, cleaning the dinning room, cooking in the kitchen, running machines in the factory.  We worked six days a week- really, more like five and a half since Fridays we were able to knock off a bit early.  The volunteers all lived in the same row of flats and the factory workers were a few rows away.*

Since it was a small kibbutz there wasn’t much to do on our days off. Sometimes we’d travel into Tel Aviv or down to Jerusalem for the night.  Often we’d stay on the kibbutz and drink at the pub- which was actually a converted bomb shelter- or walk over to the “bush pub” which was a bar a bit further away.  Saturday mornings were the best- we’d all sleep late and then gather in one of our small flats to make breakfast on our hot plates.  We’d take fresh vegetables from the kibbutz kitchen (this was how most of the kibbutzniks did their shopping- just wandered through the walk-in with plastic bags in hand.  It’s really no wonder they had to revamp their practices a few years after I left!) and eat them with fresh bread and cheese outside on the grass in front of our flats.

The kibbutz (or at least a tiny piece of it)

 

Sometimes we’d make dinners.  That was always a bit harder and we’d have to get creative.  Sometimes we’d take the Friday chicken from the dinning room and supplement it with vegetables.  One night, and I remember it clearly, despite all the Shabbat wine I’d had, one of the Australian volunteers made what she called “white sauce” with pasta.  It was delicious and I watched intently and then demanded that she tell me how she made it.  She described it to me and I memorized it.  It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized what I was making was technically a Bechamel Sauce.

Bechamel is, according to epicurious.com, a basic French white sauce which is the base of many other sauces and was named after its inventor, Louis XIV’s steward Louis de Bechamel. I have found this to be true and have used it in numerous applications over the years.  So, to me it is an invaluable Kitchen Basic.  Plus, it  always reminds me of S., the sassy Australian volunteer (who, in a strange twist of fate, met her now husband (who is from South Africa) on the kibbutz and they currently live a few towns away from me! So she had to come from Australia to Israel to meet her South African husband and then to move to the U.S. Funny how life works, huh?)

Bechamel Sauce aka White Sauce

Ingredients

3 Tablespoons butter

3 Tablespoons flour

1 cup milk

nutmeg (a true Bechamel uses a bit of nutmeg, I don’t always use it)

Additional items:  cheese, dry mustard, onions, garlic, other flavorings

Directions:

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.  If using, add the onions and garlic, letting them soften but not crisp up or burn.

Sprinkle the flour around in the pan and use a whisk to combine it with the butter. 

Keep whisking until all the butter is absorbed and you have  kind of paste.
Let it cook over medium heat until it’s a nice golden color- about 1-2 minutes.  It will be sort of nutty smelling which is good.  (This mixture of flour and fat is technically a roux.  It can be used as a thickening agent for a number of dishes.)

Add a bit of the milk and whisk in order to make it smooth with no lumps. It will thicken up very quickly. Add the rest of the milk and whisk again.  Cook over medium heat for a few minutes but keep an eye on it and whisk it often since it will continue to thicken and you don’t want it to scorch on the bottom. 

Season it with salt, pepper and nutmeg.  A few sprinkles of all three- nothing too strong.  If you’re using it to make a cheese sauce, stir in the grated cheese a bit at a time (I have a visual in my mind of S. standing at her hot plate, patiently tearing pieces of cheese and dropping them into the sauce while she stirred it.).   In this case, I added cheddar cheese to make a cheese sauce.  Serve over pasta or meat or whatever you like.  The basic Bechamel sauce is what’s used as the topping to moussaka which is a dish I love but almost never make since it’s a time-consuming one.  Of course as I write this, I’m thinking it’s probably no more time-consuming than lasagna so maybe I’ll give it a shot one of these cold weekends.  Stay tuned!

*In scouring the web for links I came across a website made by a volunteer whose time on the kibbutz overlapped with mine. He’s made a bit of a website with photos and such so if you’re interested, click here.

Kitchen Basics: Roasted Veggies

Whenever I tell someone about a recipe, I often use the phrase, “Oh, it’s really easy….”  without remembering that for people who don’t cook, “really easy” can be purely subjective.  As a result, when I say something is really easy, I mean it’s really easy for me- it may be a bunch of steps but they’re all steps about which I’m confident or there may be a lot of chopping but I can remember what each ingredient is.

One of the best lessons I learned from my Grandmother was to take risks in the kitchen.  If you liked something you ate somewhere, ask how it was made and try it yourself.  Be creative and experiment the worst than happen is you don’t like what you’ve made and you end up eating pizza for a night.  She backed this up, though, by also teaching me some basic techniques so that when I was experimenting I’d have a solid basis from which to be creative.

So, if I were to open a cooking school (read The School Of Essential Ingredients- in another life, that’s my dream), I’d start with what I consider Kitchen Basics, those techniques that give you the foundation from which to build flavors and textures and creativity.  That would be the first few lessons.  Then we’d spend the rest of the time pairing foods and seeing what we could do.  Since I don’t have a cooking school and will probably not be holding cooking classes in my home (at least not until I get a new stove and oven), I’ll do it here.  Every once in a while, I’ll write a Kitchen Basics post.

Today’s Kitchen Basics is a quick and easy (no, really, I promise) way to cook just about any vegetable you can find.  There are lots of ways to cook veggies- popular in my husband’s home was boiling which is actually the least successful way.  As the vegetable boils, lots of the nutrients are leaked out into the water.  You can steam or par-boil (boil briefly) and then saute, both of which (if done correctly) retain the crispness and color of the veggie.  If it’s summer or you live someplace warm or own a grill pan and a strong vent, you can grill most veggies.  My favorite way, hands down, is to roast.  It’s easy, takes one pan and almost no tending.  Plus, the veggies stay crisp and get this nice, deep, rich flavor.  Mmmmm.

Roasted Vegetables

Basic Technique:

A few points:

1. You’ll need a good pan.  For potatoes, broccoli, green beans, asparagus, and cauliflower, I use a shallow roasting pan.  I actually can’t think of a vegetable for which I wouldn’t use it.
2. The tenderness of the vegetable is a personal thing.  I like mine to be tender but not too crisp whereas my husband likes them closer to raw.  Play around with it to see what you like- more tender= longer in the oven.
3. Roasted vegetables with get a nice brown to them- the tips of the broccoli and asparagus, for example, will be sort of crispy and crunchy and I love it.  If you don’t like it, take them out a little bit sooner.
4. While the veggies don’t have to be the exact same size, all pieces should be roughly the same so they’ll cook at the same rate.  If it’s something like green beans, just trim the ends and you’re good to go but something like potatos which you’d peel (or not) and cut up, they need to be roughly even.
5. A flat spatula is the easiest way to turn them.
6. The basic idea is to toss the veggies in a little bit of oil, salt and pepper, lay them in one flat sheet (don’t overlap or pile them) and put them in the oven.  Turn them once or twice and then enjoy.  See?  It really is easy, I promise.  I’ll give an example below but the basic technique is the same.
7. The oil can burn if you use too much so make sure you have your oven fan/vent going or else you’ll smoke out your kitchen.
8. Some veggies benefit from a little extra, though all are great right out of the oven without any other prep- broccoli, for instance, is great roasted with a little bit of parm cheese sprinkled over.

Roasted Veggie Example:  Asparagus

Ingredients

Asparagus

olive oil

salt & pepper

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Wash and prep the asparagus. 

This means to snap the ends off- the stems get more woody and tough towards the bottom.  The best way I’ve found is to hold the top and bottom of the asparagus gently and bend- the stalk will naturally snap where the stem starts to get more tough.  Or you can line them up so that the tops (the skinny, more flower-looking part) are even and cut off the ends about 1/3 of the way up so that they’re all the same length.  Also, if your stalks are really thick, you may want to peel them down slightly.  A note:  Do NOT put asparagus ends or peels into the disposal.  This is also true of celery and artichoke.  They all get sort of stringy and will clog the drain.  Just don’t do it.

Place the prepped asparagus on a sheet pan.  Top with a bit of olive oil- probably 2-3 tablespoons, depending on the number of asparagus you have.  You don’t want them swimming in it, just a nice little shine on each one.  Sort of shake the pan to evenly distribute it.  Season with salt and pepper.  Roast for about 4-8 minutes, depending on the thickness.  Taste and decide how you want them.  I like them a bit more tender and crispy-topped than my husband who prefers them on the more crisp, less tender side.  They are a great side dish- very easy!  We had meatloaf and sweet potato with ours.