Roasted Chicken-Part I

Roasted chicken is on our our favorite meals. Sometimes M eats the potatoes, sometimes she doesn't. We love the onions that have cooked with it. It's rather simple to make, you just need to give yourself enough time to cook it (which is exactly where I ran into trouble tonight, but more on that one later).

To make a roasted chicken you need a 3 - 4 lb whole chicken. It should be completely thawed. If it has a neck, remove it--the easiest way I've found is just to cut it off with a kitchen shears (I know--that's gross, it's my least favorite part of the whole thing). Then, starting at the neck cavity (where you just removed the neck), loosen skin from the breasts back to the drumsticks by inserting your fingers and gently pushing between skin and meat. Combine 1/2 t salt and 1/2 t pepper and rub under loosened skin. Stuff the internal cavity (again, that will be opened up considerably after removing the neck in the front and the tail in the back) with 4 sprigs oregano, 1 lemon cut into 1/4's or 1/6's and 1 celery stalk cut into 2 inch pieces (which I often omit). Place chicken, breast side up, in a roasting pan. In a bowl, combine about 2 pounds of red skinned potatoes, cut into small chunks and 2 lbs yellow sweet onions, cut into 1/8's. Toss with 2 T melted butter, 1/2 t salt and 1/4 t pepper. Spread the veggies around the chicken in the roasting pan. Bake in a preheated 425 oven for 20 minutes. Then, lower the heat to 325, cover, and bake an additional 1 hour, 15 minutes or until a meat thermometer registers 180 in the thigh or 170 in the breast. Allow to stand 15 minutes before carving/serving.

Like I said, normally this is a favorite meal of ours. If you want you could make a gravy with the broth at the bottom of the pan after the chicken is roasted. I am not a big gravy maker, so I've yet to attempt that. One of these times. This evening, we ran into trouble with our bird. I usually use a 3 - 4 pound chicken--one on the smaller side. Tonight I had the poultry-farmer's pride--a 5 and a quarter pound chicken. I knew for a 3 pound chicken it didn't take that long to cook. I learned tonight that a five and a quarter pound chicken will take about 30 - 45 minutes longer to roast than a skinny, less than 4 pound chicken. Thus 6:45 rolled around and the chicken was finally ready (instead of 6:15 which still pushed dinner back a little). I was home with the kids by myself, J was fussy and M was just hungry. So, before the chicken was ready we snacked on cereal. Neither was particularly hungry when the chicken was ready. Lesson learned. Thus, I was left without a just barely eaten chicken and no pictures of my masterpiece (and it was beautiful!).