Roast Chicken

After getting home from work, I realized that there is nothing but hummus (too salty for a 16month old), a bit of leftover 'creative' parsley omelette (which said 16month old hates), and wild rice (another thing my son hates). I proceed to feed him these things for dinner, and then a tantrum commences. He eats a few bites of apple, and we call it a dinner. Ugh. It's over, there is nothing to feed him. After he goes to bed, I decide I better cook that whole chicken that I bought on Sunday. I bought it, forgot about it, and thank goodness I remembered it.

At 8:30pm, I google 'whole chicken' and decide on the following recipe.

Ingredients (Edited by MI)

- 1 (5 to 6 pound) roasting chicken - My chicken is only 4.25lbs, but we can work with this, right?

Salt

- black pepper

- 1 large bunch fresh thyme (I just have parsley, so screw you fresh thyme, your ugly step brother parsley is joining the party)

- 1 lemon, halved (Yeah, I don't have a lemon, but I can squirt that 'ReaLemon' stuff wherever)

- 1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise (I don't know what this means, so I took a HUGE clove of garlic, took off the peely outside and sliced it into stinky slivers)

- 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter. (I sliced a large random chunk off the whimsical rhino butter dish that we user to butter bagels and melted it in a mug in the freakin microwave)

- 1 large yellow onion, thickly sliced (or two small onions that are about to go bad. I have no idea if they are yellow)

- 4 carrots cut into 2-inch chunks (Okay, so we had a ton of about-to-go-bad carrots. So, I used all of them - ended up being 10 kinda stumpy oddly shaped purple, white and orange carrots. Fingers crossed.)

- Olive oil

Directions

- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

- Leave that chicken where it is for a minute and chop all the vegetables.

- Chop carrots, onion and parsley (or seriously fennel if you have it) and put them in the roasting pan.

- Throw some olive oil all over the vegetables - but not too much - just enough so they won't burn. Mix them with your hands. Add some salt and pepper - I have no idea how much you like, but I shook the containers about 7 times.

- NOW, cut that chicken out of it's bag or whatever you bought it in. Rinse under the sink and remove any giblets. Do NOT freak out that holding a whole, raw chicken that has a little backbone and little wing (arm) & leg joints feels kinda like holding a newborn baby (yeah, maybe skip this recipe. I'm going to become a vegetarian after this. I've handled poultry before, but not since giving birth. I'm not so into it.)

- Shove the garlic and parsley (fennel, if you have it) in it's cavity, and squeeze some of that ReaLemon in there too.

- Place the chicken on the carrots, etc. in the pan and place (covered with aluminum foil, if desired. I learned this later from HERE and totally took the chicken out after 20 min and covered it) in the oven for 1.5 hours.

Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/perfect-roast-chicken-recipe/index.html?oc=linkback

FAMILY RATING: 5/5
MY RATING: 4/5 - I should have added even MORE carrots. The 4 carrots in the recipe, plus the additional 8 small purple carrots that I added were not enough. I would have liked more. It tasted great!

PHOTO:
I cut behind the wings to be sure the chicken was done. I forgot to take a perfect picture beforehand.