How to Roast a Chicken Without Burning Down the House or Killing a Guest with Food Poisoning

Have you ever wandered down the aisles of your local supermarket and smelled the wonderful, savory scent of the roasted chickens in the deli section? Have you ever wondered how to do this at home? Well if you answered yes to either of these questions (or even answered no), I will show you how to safely roast a chicken at home that will taste even better than the roasted chicken at the grocery store! The two best parts of this recipe are how easy it really is and how great it will taste.
The wonderful thing about buying whole chickens is how cheap they can be. It is not uncommon to find a whole chicken for under $3.00. A whole chicken (weighing between 2 to 2.5 pounds) can feed 2-3 people depending on their appetites. The reason a whole chicken is so much cheaper than other forms of chicken is that there are no added costs of quartering, deboning or fileting. When selecting your chicken, make sure to check the expiration date - obviously, you want the freshest bird available. Additionally, be advised that different types of chickens have different colors. For example, a corn-fed chicken has yellowish tint to it's skin. Don't worry about it, it is perfectly normal. Just make sure that the chicken you pick out doesn't vary too greatly in color from the other chickens of the same type. Personally, I usually pick out the chickens that are on sale. I do not notice too much of a difference in taste between regular chicken or chicken fed on a different diet (Although, for those that wish, organic chickens are almost always readily available - but at a much higher cost).
Prepping a chicken for roasting is incredible easy. Before you touch the raw poultry, you will need to set up your work area and open your spices. For seasoning chicken, I always use olive oil, salt and a mixture of dried onions, peppers and garlic. There is no rhyme or reason with the spices that you can add to a chicken - basically, just use what you have on hand and what you think will taste good! Get out a roasting pan, and preheat your oven to 350 degrees (180 Celsius).
*Now, before you begin handling the poultry, remember: Never touch anything after you have touched raw poultry without first washing your hands!*
The first thing that you need to do is thoroughly wash the chicken - inside and out. Once you have done this, dry it off with a paper towel. Then, place the chicken (or chickens) in the greased roasting pan (even though the chicken will emit oil, I have found that unless I spray the bottom of my roasting pan with non-stick spray, the bottom tends to stick to the pan).

With one hand, pour enough olive oil onto the chickens to give them a light coating (this is what the seasonings will adhere to). With the other hand, rub the oil in to all of the crevices of the chicken. Next, with the hand you used to pour the oil, grab your seasonings and sprinkle liberally all over the chicken and rub the spices in with the other hand. That's it. Total prep time? About a minute. Now wash your hands!

Ready to be put in the Oven

The next thing you will have to do is to determine the cook time for your chicken. The general rule of thumb is to roast for 20 minutes for each pound plus an additional 15 minutes. For example, a 3 pound chicken will need to be roasted for 1 hour and 15 minutes. If you are bad at math (like me), there are plenty of websites that can help you calculate the roasting time.
Once you have figured out how long the bird needs to be cooked, pop it into the preheated oven uncovered and pour yourself a nice glass of wine. After the allotted time, insert a meat thermometer into the chicken's inner thigh (without touching the bone) and verify that the temperature is 165 degrees (75 degrees Celsius). If it has reached this temperature, take it out of the oven and cover it with tin foil. The chicken should remain under the foil for around 10 minutes. This is commonly called letting the chicken "rest". Resting is done in order for some of the juices that were lost in the roasting to be reabsorbed - which will result in a much more tender chicken.

Finished Chickens

The life of the chicken doesn't end here, though. Once you have picked the carcasses clean of any meat (see the following paragraph about a great use of leftover chicken), you can make a great chicken bouillon. Just toss the carcasses into a large stock pot along with: carrots, celery, onions, salt and garlic and boil for several hours uncovered. Once the liquid in the pot has reduced to about half, strain all the liquids into a smaller pot. From there, reduce the stock until you only have about a cup or so left in the pot. Put the stock in the refrigerator for around 6 hours and then skim any of the fat that rises to the top. From there, pour the remaining liquid into ice cube trays and freeze. This is a great alternative to store-bought bouillon. Just remember that the bouillon will be concentrated, so you will need to dilute it when using it.

With regards to the leftovers, you can make a chicken salad! Just chop any of the spare chicken, mix with the seasonings of your choice and mayonnaise. Yum!

Good luck and if you make this, let me know how the chickens turn out!