Help! Chicken roast dinner.

[MyDaydream]

As a nice treat to my OH, who I very rarely get to sit down to eat dinner with, I've offered to make a roast dinner for him and his brother this weekend. This will be my first roast dinner and now I'm starting to wonder what I've let myself in for. I have all these memories of my grandma moaning we never help, moaning we're under the feet and generally getting into a tizzy over this meal. So does anyone have any tips, recipies, links, anything that will make this meal go down a treat?
I'm doing a chicken, roast potatoes, mash, Yorkshires, stuffing, gravy and a couple of different veggies in the steamer. Some of these things things I know how to do, others no idea, but really my weak point is making sure everything is done at the same time.
Any advice would be much, much appreciated.

[jenni75]

Steamers are good as you can steam different vegs all at once, warm plates and let the chicken rest, i use bisto chicken gravy granules with the juices from the chicken and it makes a nice gravy.

[jenni75]

Wash chicken in sink of cold water with a bit of salt in it,drain and put in roasting tin, pat dry with kitchen roll ( including inside ), rub some olive oil over the chicken, then put a cup or so of cold water in the base of the tin and then cover with tinfoil and roast in a pre heated oven as per instructions.
Hope that helps :)

[ivykaty44]

my cousin always makes her yorkshires first and then pops them back in the oven for 5 minutes at the end to heat up - so much the same as auntie bessie but cousin sallys instead and nicer

use the dish the chicken has cooked in to make the gravey - then you get the chicken juices into the gravey for added flavour.

roast potato boil for ten minutes first, then shake to make crumbly outsides so you get crispy roasts

hot plates put them in the grill part of the oven to get hot nothing worse than a cold roast after ten minutes due to food going on a cold plate.

[TheSkiingGardener]

Get the chicken out 20 minutes before you are serving up. Put it on a warm dish and cover in foil to rest. Then forget about it until everything else is done. Gives you time to do veg etc and get organised.

Also, make a timetable, with everything you need to do. That used to reduce the stress for me considerably.

Mash, stuffing and yorkshires can all be done the day before and heated through as well.

[deaconblue]

Timings are for a medium chicken. The size I buy takes 90 mins in oven.

[deaconblue]

Reduce the stress by buying yorkshires and using bisto gravy. Both perfectly fine for first roast dinner. Prep all your veg before you start cooking. I put chicken in the oven, put dish for the potatoes in to heat up, straight away put potatoes on to par boil (7 mins), drain potatoes and drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and put in oven.
Then set table. Rest for 45 mins. Cook veg, make gravy and bung everything on the table for self serve. Get your oh to carve and wash up.