How to Roast a Chicken

My family back home (yes, that is on the farm) raises chicken (for the meat-sorry if that grosses you out, but remember I’m a farm girl and it is just normal life to me). They also have chickens that lay eggs so when I go home I get farm fresh eggs to bring back with me-how cool is that? Just a FYI the egg laying chickens are not grown for the meat, they often go to the sale barn when they stop laying eggs. I could go into detail about this, but I’ll leave it at that :). Anyway…..so not only did I get farm fresh eggs last time I went home, but I also got a couple full frozen chickens. I personally have never roasted a chicken so I researched online and came up with my own recipe to give this roasting thing a whirl.

Roast Chicken

4-6 lb whole chicken

1/8 C Extra Virgin Olive Oil

4 T Herbs de Provence

2 Bay Leaves

1 Lemon (cut in half)

Salt & Pepper

Defrost the whole chicken if frozen (mine was) so I took the chicken out of the freezer so it had 3 whole days to defrost in the fridge. Place in 9×13 glass pan. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Rub the olive oil to completely cover the outside of the chicken. Then squeeze one half of the lemon over the chicken and place the rind and the other half inside the chicken cavity. Rub the lemon juice over the chicken. Cover the chicken with the Herbs de Provence and rub. Cover chicken in salt and pepper and rub. Place the 2 bay leaves in the chicken cavity. Roast the chicken for 60 minutes.

Chicken all rubbed up

Final result: Roast Chicken

Watch out with this oil I did have some smoke come from the oven, especially when it was done and took it out of the oven. May have even set the smoke detector off in the apartment. So beware! However, the end result was juicy chicken with a nice crispy skin. What I like to call-Perfecto!