I’ve never roasted a chicken before.
I actually rarely ever cook chicken.
I’m the person in the deli section finding ways to avoid raw chicken. Rotisserie chickens to make dips. Pre-grilled frozen strips for wraps. Buffalo anytizers for game day. Eventually, once we started the transition towards being really careful about hormones and antibiotics in our food, we pretty much just stopped eating chicken.
I’m a chicken when it comes to chicken.
But recently, I’ve decided I need to do more things that scare me. I need to try things, and fail at them. And be ok with it.
{For back-story, see my POTS blog, and my Be Brave blog.}
FACT: Roast chicken is the scariest of all simple chicken cooking techniques. (This is a fact based on the facebook-reality-screening concept.) There’s twine, and stuffing, and basting, and correct intervals of baking racks. It’s a simple (and lazy) home cook’s nightmare. And I’m about facing demons these days.
So, I bought a chicken. A whole chicken. With bones. And I found a recipe. And I cooked the chicken.
And we ate the chicken.
And nobody died!
Here’s the recipe I used as my guide, from Wonky Wonderful Whole Food Blog . (If you’re a person who likes cooking easy, whole foods, go ahead and follow while you’re over there checking out the recipe. After reading the paragraph where she talks about renaming her blog to The Lazy Cook because she’s not interested in time-consuming recipes, I was searching for the follow button.)
This beautiful, four-pound bird even came with roasting instructions on the package! And I got all excited when I opened it before I saw…
WHAT? THERE ARE GIZZARDS IN HERE? EW!
…also. What is a gizzard? And what does one do with gizzards?
I racked my brain for the moments when my mom talked about cooking turkey gizzards and came up blank. Took a deep breath, reached my innocent, gizzard-virgin hand into – INTO, AS INSIDE OF – the butt of the chicken, literally holding my breath. I mean, this is an organic chicken, from Wegmans. Those people are serious about their natural efforts. For all I know, there may have still been a beating heart in there. You know, to keep things organic and whatnot.
What I pulled out though, was parchment paper, all neatly wrapping up these organ innards of this bird.
With a rush of gratitude toward Wegmans (hey – one scary thing at a time, ok?), I stomped down the over-achiever thoughts (“I should look up what to do with these instead of wasting them – Pate? Amuse bouche? Also, look up what amuse bouche is.”) and tossed the parchment parcel.
I followed the instructions from Wonky, including the twine-free method of “trussing” (why would you ever buy twine?? This whole cross-legged through the skin scenario is soooo easy!), stuffing the bird with half a lemon and some chopped onion, rubbing down the bird in a melted butter (for crispy skin) and olive oil (for complexion? I don’t know.) concoction, then tossing on a garlic salt, black pepper, rosemary, garlic powder, onion powder bath. Laid that baby down to sleep on come chopped onion in a roasting pan, and – AND –
I remembered, for the first time EVER, to move a rack in the oven BEFORE I TURNED IT ON.
Heather – 1, Bad Memory – 124,765,001
So ha.
My chicken took about 60 minutes on the nose. The spices were kind of burnt, so maybe next time I’ll rub it and the butter/ olive oil all together, and the skin wasn’t crispy all over – I think my roasting pan is too deep – but it smelled AH-MAZE-ING!
So amazing I did not remember to let it rest before I tore into it and served it up.
Oops.
It was still tender and juicy and flavorful and I totally failed at failing.
But I succeeded at failing at perfection.
If you’re a perfectionist too, you get me… right?
I roasted Brussel sprouts as well, which I also never make, because Matt doesn’t like them. You know what happened when he ate them? He decided he still doesn’t like Brussel sprouts.
Ah, well. Can’t win ‘em all.
WHILE I’M COOKING:
I watched Good Girls on Netflix.
And listened to Born A Crime by Trevor Noah on Audible.
