Day 303 - Lemon Herb Roasted Chicken

Rosemary...............Marjoram................Thyme

Why the heck haven't I made one of these yet?
Seriously?
I'm 302 days into this project and I... haven't roasted a chicken yet?!
How can that possibly be??!!
Bizarre.

Mr. 365 has Thursdays off and was going to run some errands.  He asked if I needed anything at the store, so I asked him to pick me up some fresh herbs for the chicken. I asked him for 3 and he came back with 2 saying that they didn't have the sage.
Bummer.
He then takes me out to the backyard, points to a plant and says,
"But you've got this.  What herb is this?"
An herb in our backyard?
The only herbs I knew we were growing was the basil given to me by our daughter's boyfriend's mother, Traci, and the flat leaf parsley which has just begun to show up again.
"This isn't an herb."
"Yes, it is," he says, "you picked it when we were putting the backyard together, remember?"
Uh, apparently not.
After snipping off a branch, taking a good whiff and biting on one of the leaves, I thought to myself, I must be crazy putting a plant I don't know into my mouth, but then it started to taste familiar.
Yes, I go around eating the plants in the backyard.
It tasted somewhat similar to a rhododendron I remember eating back east.
I'm kidding.  Don't eat the rhododendron.  I don't know if they're edible.
I went and did a search for the plant in our backyard on the internet.
Well, what do you know?
That daggum plant be Rosemary!

Yeah, I said daggum 'cause that's how I talk when I discover something really cool.
I was like SO smart when we bought it, knowing that I'd be using it in my cooking endeavors!!
And yet because I had forgotten that we had planted this, here I was buying it at the grocery store every time I needed some rosemary.
There's this abundant, beautiful plant in the backyard!
WHO KNEW??
Obviously this man o'mine!
Ah, SO very exciting.  It's the little things that just make my day.
And it's just another reason why I love Mr. 365.  He fixes my oven AND he knows his herbs!
Go figure.
I guess I'll just have to keep him.

This chicken was in the oven for only 5 minutes and the smell was intoxicating.
I SO can't wait to taste this baby!

Recipe adapted from Pastor Ryan over at The Pioneer Woman.

Lemon Herb Roasted Chicken - serves 4 with leftovers for additional meals

1 5-6 pound chicken
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion, quartered
1 lemon, zested and quartered and slightly squeezed
a few sprigs of rosemary
1 tablespoon fresh marjoram, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons canola oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Remove the neck, heart, liver and...there was a fourth item that I took out, but I can't remember what it was.  You'll need to remove that, too.
Rinse the chicken well and give it good pat down with a paper towel or two.  You want to make sure the skin is dry so that the canola oil with give the skin a good browning.

Place the chicken on a cutting board.

Insert one clove of garlic, followed by a quarter of both the onion and lemon into the cavity.  Place a sprig of rosemary in, too.  Repeat with remaining onion, lemon and garlic and rosemary til you can't fit anything else.  You might use it all, you might not.  It's ok.  Don't get yourself into a tizzy if you don't.

Be creative.  You can put them in the chicken in any order.  No one's going to care, especially the chicken.  We're using them to add flavor to the bird as it cooks and you won't be eating them...unless you really have a craving to after it cooks.
No, just eat the chicken.
In a small bowl, combine chopped herbs: marjoram, rosemary, and thyme; add lemon zest, salt, and pepper.  Mix well.

Add canola oil and thoroughly combine.
Separate the skin from the breasts by gently sliding your fingers in between the skin and meat.  With your hands, distribute a couple of teaspoons of herb mixture all along the chicken breasts.
Give that bird a good rubdown all over with the remaining herb mixture.  Make sure you cover the bottom with it as well.

You can see some of the herbs under the skin.

Transfer chicken to a rack placed in a roasting pan.
Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a meat thermometer reaches 165 degrees F. and the skin is a nice golden brown.

Remove from oven and allow bird to sit for 10-15 minutes before slicing.  This will help to keep the bird moist.

I rate everything I bake on a scale of 1-4 with 4 being the best and this Lemon Herb Roasted Chicken earned, as my son said, 9 rolling pins.
Alright, we'll stick to the original rating system and give it a 4.
This was so doggone delicious, I cannot tell you!
The meat was so moist and the skin...
Oh. My. Dear. Heavens.
I could have eaten ALL the skin off of that bird myself.
It was un. be. lievable.
Spell check isn't happy with me right now, but it was that good.
With about 45 minutes left in cooking time, I added about 1-2 cups of water into the bottom of the roasting pan because the oil was burning in the bottom of the pan and I didn't want the smoke alarm going off.  I also added a bit more water before everything was said and done and I think that also contributed to how moist the bird was.
I don't know.  I could be wrong, but that's my guess anyway.

I'm excited because this meal tonight will now be used for one, if not two additional meals this week and it was not an expensive dinner to make.
That's why I love the rotisserie chickens at the store because I can make them last longer than one meal.
I'll dissect that thing tomorrow, use the leftover chicken for what I haven't decided yet, and possibly do a soup with the bones.
Of course, I'll remove the bones before I serve it to the family.
Now that I know how to successfully roast a chicken, I don't think I'll be buying them at the store anytime soon.
They are definitely worth the money.  Stock up when they're on sale and stick them in the freezer!

I give you BIG baking hugs and muffins!!