Chicken failure

I had accumulated two chickens in my freezer, and I was at the end of most of my produce from last week, so it was time to cook some chicken. After cooking my last two chickens in the crock pot, I wanted to try roasting it.


Of course, where do I turn? Pioneer Woman, of course. She actually has a guest cook post a recipe for Herb Roasted Chicken, but my sister had tried it and said it was good. So I defrosted my chicken, and on Sunday night followed the recipe. It's really simple:

• 3-4lb Whole Chicken
• Something to stuff inside the chicken (Apple, Onion, Lemon, Garlic, Carrot, etc.)
• Canola Oil (1 tablespoon)
  Salt (1 tablespoon) and Pepper (1 teaspoon)
• Fresh Herbs (1-2 tablespoons)

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Stuff chicken with "aromatics."

Chop herbs and mix with canola oil, salt and pepper.  Rub chicken with herb mixture. Rub it on all sides.

Cook for an hour and 15 minutes. Let the chicken rest for 15 minutes and then serve.

Now that I read the directions again I see my mistakes. Because I definitely screwed this chicken up. First of all, I only had vegetable oil, not canola oil, (probably not a huge deal) and I forgot the salt and pepper. But that's nothing compared to the fact I read these recipe a few days before making it and thought I remembered everything, but I set my oven to 400 degrees. Yeah, the top of my chicken was cooked, but when I started to pull off the meat to store, I discovered the chicken was not cooked. It went back in the oven but of course that made it pretty dry.


So I have to say, this was a total fail for me. But at least I wasn't serving it to anyone else, and I've learned my lesson.


Of course, failure only makes me want to try and get it right, so hopefully I will be able to post my success at this recipe at some point.

I will note that it's been good to have chicken around again. I've been able to turn around dinner in 20 minutes or less this week, a good thing since I get home from work at 8 p.m.