Christmas chicken

Merry Christmas! We have had a fantastic day here with the Christmas-crazy toddler. There were gifts, there was merriment, there was food. And that's what I wanted to post about, because today I cooked my first-ever whole chicken.

A couple of weeks ago it just sort of hit me that I'd never cooked a whole bird of any kind, and I thought I needed to try it. We've been trying to figure out a good Christmas dinner for about four years (ever since we stopped visiting out-of-state relatives on the actual day), with the only constant during that time being broccoli casserole. One year we had lasagna. One year we had ham. I kind of can't remember what we had last year. So roast chicken sounded pretty good, and appropriately Christmas-y. I'd just never cooked one.

So, after consulting with the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook, my mom, my sister, and various people at work, and calling my parents from the grocery store to find out the difference between a "roaster" chicken and a "broiler" chicken (turns out the roaster is just bigger, but you can roast either one; do they just label them that way to be confusing?), I was ready to give it a shot today. And I must say, it turned out really good, and I don't mind saying I am quite proud of my culinary accomplishments.

My sister swears if you cook a bird upside-down, it keeps it from drying out. I believe her, but since the logistics of bird-cooking were new to me, and I spent a solid couple of minutes just staring at the cookbook illustration of how to tuck the wings (which I still don't think I did right), I just cooked our chicken right side-up. I didn't think I should try to get too fancy on my first chicken-cooking adventure.

I started off with a recipe and some recommendations from the cookbook, and then sort of made it up from there...I didn't have all the herbs that were called for, but I had some other ones, so I just went with it. Below is my "recipe," mostly so I'll remember it if I ever want to try this again (like, next Christmas):

Christmas Roast Chicken
1 "broiler" chicken (mine was 4.3 pounds)
About 4 tablespoons melted butter
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 garlic cloves, chopped in half
Half an onion, chopped in big pieces
About a 1/2 cup of celery, chopped in big pieces
About 1 teaspoon dried minced onion
About 1 tablespoon dried basil
About 1 teaspoon dried marjoram
About 1 teaspoon dried parsley
About 1 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt
Pepper

So, I remembered to pull the little bag of icky stuff out of the chicken, and I rinsed out the chicken and patted it dry like the book said. And after tucking the wings and skewering the neck skin (also like the book said), I stuffed the chopped onion, celery and garlic in "the cavity." That was kind of a gross thing to do, and I had to keep myself from thinking about it very much. (By the way, we didn't eat the "stuffing"...it was just to add some flavor and keep everything moist.) Then I put the whole bird in a cooking bag that had some flour and water in it. I rubbed the melted butter on the chicken (I would have brushed it on, but I couldn't find a basting brush so I just used my hands), and then the minced garlic. In a separate bowl (before all this chicken handling), I mixed all the dried herbs, salt and pepper, and then I put that on the chicken. I closed up the bag (and cut slits in the top) and baked it all at 375 for a little over an hour and a half. And it was really good.

Cooking a whole bird successfully makes me feel more grown-up for some reason. And with some mashed potatoes, our favorite broccoli casserole and some whole wheat dinner rolls, it made a very nice Christmas dinner. :)

Merry Christmas (again)!