Simple, Delicious Roasted Chicken

I have been wanting to try roasting a chicken for a while now. We buy the grocery store ones every now and then, which are very convenient and delicious, but they also have a lot of sodium in them. And sodium is not good for people that watch Notre Dame football, because enough heart palpitations are generated every Saturday as it is. Also, store bought things are somehow never as delicious as freshly made ones, though they are the easiest option sometimes.

The girl behind one of my favorite blogs seems to roast an awful lot of delicious looking chickens that make my mouth water. Last week, I made up my mind to roast one on Sunday…but by the time I made up my mind we realized it would be 10 pm before we would eat said chicken. So round 2 this week, and I must say it was a very good decision! This homemade guy was soooo much better than the store bought kind. I hate chicken skin, and I was stealing all of the skin from this one- it was just that good! I can’t wait to use the leftovers in sandwiches, salads, pasta, etc.

This is a great idea for a Sunday, because you will likely have extra that you can use during the week for lunches. It’s also really not that tough, just a little time consuming. But, if you are feeling up for a good, hearty, homemade Sunday dinner, I highly recommend this.

In the future I’ll play around with seasonings and stuffings, but I wanted to start out simple. And simple was pretty darn good.

Ingredients

• 1 whole roasting chicken (mine was between 5 and 6 pounds)
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil

Recipe

Clean off a countertop and clear of all other items. Put salt and pepper in one little bowl (at least a teaspoon of each, I used more) and olive oil in another (at least 2 T). Keep a few paper towels out too. This way you don’t have to use your dirty chicken hands to get these things later.

Preheat your oven to 425°Open up your chicken and remove the giblets from inside. I know there are things that you can do with these, but I am a newcomer to roasting chickenas and just discarded them. Pat the whole chicken dry with paper towels. Check it to see if there are any pieces of feathers left (yes, this sounds weird and scary, but I guess comforting to know that it was a normal chicken???). Pluck them out. Okay, now it stops being weird.

Rub salt and pepper all over the whole chicken. Then, rub olive oil all over it. Place it in a roasting pan (I just used an 8×8 glass dish) and bake it in the oven for 85-90 minutes. Put it on the middle or bottom rack so the skin doesn’t burn.

Let the chicken cool for a few minutes before you cut it. The skin will seem really hard and crunchy at first, but after it cools it settles down and gets super crisp and delicious.