When I dream about roasted chicken, I think about a crisp and crackled skin with tender, juicy meat inside. When you gently tug on a leg, the meat will just slide off of the bone. The flavor is so familiar and so delicious and makes my belly content. The sides with roasted chicken vary, but I think of any combos of these things: sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, creamed spinach, ginger carrots, green beans, salads, buttered pasta, rice dishes, stuffing and a cultured condiment vegetable. The leftovers can be used in any shredded chicken recipe or cubed chicken recipe.
The US has been through so many chicken fads in the last few decades. It used to be that chickens were mostly kept whole in supermarkets and once purchased and brought home, they were either roasted whole or separated with the bone still in for fried chicken, grilled, sautéed, etc. Then the low-fat agenda hit, and it hit hard. Chickens were then deboned and removed of their skin. White meat was preferred over dark meat since it’s leaner, so chickens were further hybridized and given hormonal concoctions to give them Double D breasts as opposed to the more B sized breasts a typical chicken raised without hormones and on pasture would have.
The low-fat craze created even more problems. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts have no natural flavor. Seriously, you might as well just go and eat an envelope. That’s okay. Big Food to the rescue. What happened next was encouragement to cook these flavorless breasts in cream of bad science soups, GMO- rancid-oil salad dressing marinades full of omega 6 (inflammation inducing) fats, or boxes of quickly cooked “broths” that aren’t slow simmered and typically contain MSG. Not only that, but now the meat was devoid of glutathione which the human body craves and needs so badly for cartilage repair, connective tissue maintenance and immunity. The bones of animals are a really big deal, and they were removed for reasons that make no logical sense. You can read the science behind the need for bones here. This is a book anyone with an appetite should read.
I went through my own years-long phase of buying huge bags of frozen chicken breasts. My health certainly didn’t improve. In fact, I was healthier before that happened. Not only that, but the first few years of cooking for my husband in our marriage was totally unsatisfying. I felt like I put in so much effort with little return. Later, on a very popular food channel, whole roasted chickens became the fad that year. They make for really lovely pictures, and the celebrity cooks boasted of how great they are for entertaining or lovely weekend meals. It was then that I began trying to make them. Unfortunately, it involved many of the same time wasters I highlighted in my No Fail Turkey recipe here (my very first blog post ever).
My personality is such that I’ll try a method first or dozens of times in different ways and see if a) it works and b) if it can be improved or simplified or both. This is what inspired the roasted chicken I serve in my home time and time again. Since then, we’ve moved to purchasing only pastured chickens that get plenty of fresh air, sunshine and the healthful addition of bugs into their diet. This in turn improves their fatty acid ratio and vitamin D content. At the very least we purchase organic chickens so we aren’t ingesting GMO residue leftover from their feed. For the pastured variety, you can do a local search here or click on the link at the bottom of my blog for Tropical Traditions or US Wellness Meats.
Roasting a chicken or two doesn’t have to be difficult. It can be so easy, you’ll wish you had been doing this for years or even decades. After an amazing dinner, save the bones for that fantastic bone broth here.
Instructions:
Place your whole chicken in a baking dish. The size doesn’t matter as long as the chicken fits in it without any overhang and it’s deep enough to catch all of the juices cooking off of the meat.
Rub the entire outside of the chicken in saturated fat like pastured butter (ex: Kerrygold 100% butter not the kind with oil mixed in) or expeller pressed coconut oil (doesn’t taste like coconut oil if it’s expeller pressed) here.
Sprinkle with a mineral rich salt all over (here, here, here)
At this point this is all that you have to add to the chicken. If you want it more flavored you could sprinkle it with an all-purpose herbal blend here, and/or add fresh cracked black pepper here.
Tuck a large sheet parchment paper of your choice all around the chicken- over the top and around the sides. I personally like to buy bulk amounts like this. This is an important step for keeping it tender and the skin getting crispy.
Place into a preheated oven at 350F. Bake for 2 hours for about a 5lb bird. After this remove the parchment paper and bump the oven up to 400F. Let it brown longer for about 5 minutes then remove from the oven. Let it sit for 7-10 minutes before slicing. Serve the pan drippings in a small bowl with a spoon or place in a gravy boat.
Enjoy!
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