Roast Chicken Part Deux

Roast Chicken

I have proclaimed my love for roasted chicken before and I don’t see it subsiding anytime soon.  The reasons for my love of roasted chicken are many, too many to bother boring you with actually (okay…twist my arm: healthy, easy, plenty of leftovers, works with my clean detox).  But this time I think I outdid myself.

I have a jar of turkey brine seasoning that I got (I have no clue where it came from) after the holidays.  I kept wanting to throw it out, but I kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head telling me that I was wasting food…so on the counter it sat.  The other day they put chicken on sale so I went crazy and bought one for the freezer and one for dinner.  Then divine inspiration hit!  Thankfully it hit because I had nothing around to really make the chicken taste different than my normal go-to recipe.  I stuffed the bird with the usual odds and ends I have laying around in the fridge and I coated the bird with a couple of handfuls of the turkey brine.  The whole time it was cooking, the house smelled like Thanksgiving.

When the chicken was done, the flavor was terrific (if I do say so myself).  Surprisingly, it didn’t taste like Thanksgiving dinner.  But all the different herbs in the brine really gave the chicken so many different flavors.  The skin was salty and crisp (I think Craig ate half of the skin while I was plating up our dinner.  He couldn’t stop moaning.)

Relationship Advice

Leftovers aren’t necessarily a bad thing.  Remember, every one of us is somebone else’s leftovers that they didn’t like.  I realize that doesn’t sound very nice, but it’s true.

Ingredients

Directions

Preheat Oven to 400 degrees Farenheit.

Pour turkey brine seasoning into a small bowl and set aside.

In a shallow roasting pan (a 9 x 13 sided pan works great) add 2 of the quartered onions and six pieces of the celery.

Remove the neck and giblets from inside the chicken. (You can throw these away or lightly boil them as a treat for your favorite pooch, mine salivates as these cook away.)  Then place the chicken into the  roasting pan, on top of the onions and celery.  I put the chicken in breast side down.  While this doesn?t make for a Norman Rockwell looking roasted chicken, it is a bit more forgiving way to roast a chicken as it helps keep the breast meat from drying out.

Rub the chicken all over with olive oil.  Then rub the turkey brine seasoning over the surface of the chicken as well as inside the cavity.  If you like, you can also use your fingers and loosen the skin and spread the seasoning mixture over the meat of the thighs, drumsticks, and breast.

Take lemon quarters, garlic cloves, the rest of the celery and remaining onion quarters into cavity (if they don?t all fit, put the remaining onions in the roasting pan).

Put chicken into oven and roast.  A 4 pound chicken should be done in 60 minutes.  If your bird is larger than that, add 8 minutes of baking time for each additional pound.  The chicken is done when the thickest part of the thigh releases clear juices when pricked deeply with a fork or registers 170 ? 175 degrees on an instant read thermometer.  (If you are not familiar with roasting chicken, I highly recommend you buy an instant read thermometer.  They are inexpensive and can save you from undercooked chicken.)

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