Baked Chicken and Potatoes

I would say good morning, but it is monday, and there isn't anything good about those. I'm sitting here chugging coffee because a certain black and white furrball kept me up all night with his atrocious snoring. I will not name his name because I don't want to embarrass him. But I am tired and cranky!! Not to mention, the weather change has been playing games with my sinuses. If there is some good to be taken from this, it would be that I am happy (not right now, just in general), healthy (not right now, just in general), and it's fall!

So let's get started shall we? I have a meeting in 2 hours (UGH! why do people schedule meetings on Monday mornings??) so I need to get this show on the road.

This is not the first thing I have cooked since starting this blog, but it's probably going to be the easiest post. I'm still working my way through this whole blogging thing, so I need to start simple.

So sunday, I decided I wanted to bake a chicken. I went to the store and grabbed a whole, thawed out chicken. I could have cut the chicken up, but out of sheer laziness, decided not to. I will say though, for someone who is borderline vegetarian (I play with the idea all the time going from no meat and back), it was difficult for me to make prepare this chicken. Not because it was hard but because it was just sad :( I've only prepared a whole chicken my entire life and it had issues with it then. Just holding it in my hands, taking out it's "stuffings" (ew), touching it, etc.  So beyond my issues; here's basically what I did.

I took three regular potatoes and cut them up into blocks. Not large blocks, not small blocks, just medium sized blocks. I halfway peeled them. You can either peel them or not. I like skin on my potatoes, so I only took some of the skin off. After that I washed them really good. Make sure that if you're going to leave some of the skin on, you wash them really well. Plain water will do.

After I chopped the potatoes, I covered them in olive oil and spread them out into a pan. I took one tablespoon of butter and cut it into quarters and spread them out into the pan. I also took half a yellow onion and chopped it (not finely, just into rectangles, see the picture below). This gives it a good flavor and the onions taste pretty good after they've been baked with the potatoes :)

If you're like me and you love garlic, take 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, chop it, and also put it in the pan. Season the potatoes with rosemary, and whatever other spices you happen to like.

For the chicken:

Make sure it's thawed out. Reach inside its cavity and take the innards (ew) out. I just toss them out. I'm not advanced enough to actually do anything with them, (I don't even know what they are. I just know that they're gross) nor do I want to.

Here is what I used to season my chicken: Rosemary, chopped garlic, lemon slices, Roasted Garlic and Herb seasoning, olive oil, garlic salt, and pepper. Smother the chicken in whatever spices you want, just make sure it's covered good. What I learned from this is that you have to get seasoning in ever nook and stinking cranny. If you don't, your chicken will be bland and that makes everyone sad.

I squeezed lemon juice from half a lemon onto the chicken and put the rest of the lemon on, inside, and around the chicken. I baked it just like that.

So here's what it ended up looking like before I baked it:

 

About halfway through it's cooking, feel free to smother it with more lemon juice and garlic. I didn't do this, so my chicken turned out a little on the bland side.

 

I pre heated the oven to 400 and put the chicken on the bottom rack. I baked for about an hour and a half. I am weird about chicken so I wanted to make sure it was done! It turned out brown and crispy and juicy. The potatoes were great. The only thing I would have done differently was season my chicken more. This was the finishing product:

 

 

See how pretty it is? Even better, it's a cheap meal that's not fattening, and it's very filling. It's so incredibly easy. Have fun with it; i'm just here telling you my experience and to give you some ideas on what to do (or not do ;)). Thanks for reading!!! Please leave any questions in the comments.