Easy Chicken

Sorry, I don't have a photo yet of the prepared dish.  I'll probably be making it later this week, and I'll be sure to take a picture for you.  For now, settle for a picture of these happy, roaming chickens as a reminder that cheap, hormone-packed chickens are neither delicious nor healthy.  Not to mention (and I cannot believe that I am making this point) that those mass-producing chicken factories are really awful.

Regardless, this recipe will make you as happy as a roaming chicken.

You need:

A covered roasting pan
1 chicken (a small, broiler/fryer is fine).  This recipe can be done from with a chicken that is frozen, but of course it will need longer to cook.
Garlic
Pepper
Tarragon
White wine
Butter or olive oil

Preheat to 375F.

Put the chicken in the roasting pan.  I don't intend to insult your intelligence, but take all the bits out of the cavity first.  If you buy several chickens at once and freeze them, take the giblets out before you freeze them.  Save them separately in the freezer for stock making.  We'll talk about THAT another time.

Season the bird with garlic, pepper and tarragon.  You could toss a half of an apple in the cavity of the bird.  That would be delicious.  Pour about a half a cup of white wine over the seasonings and add a few pats of butter on the top.  Or olive oil.  But never margarine.  Curse you, oily-fake-fat.  Curse you.

How long?  That depends.  From fresh, 1.5 hours?  From frozen, I like to start this at least 3 hours before meal time.  It's a very forgiving sort of thing, and you have to leave it in for a LONG time before it is ruined from over cooking.  Once, after a ferocious bedtime with J~, we both fell asleep and this was still in the oven.  It was cooking for 6 hours.  It was... yeah, that was a bad thing.  Never lay down to "just close your eyes" if you have something in the oven.

I would bet that this could be cooked with great success in a slow cooker.  I'll get back to you on that!

This is one of my favorite recipes because it tastes good, is very easy to make, and roasting chickens are cheap!  It's dinner for the three of us, plus lunch the next day, and I save the carcass and giblets in the freezer till I have a few of them and then make a big pot of stock.  But, like I said: that's a story for another time...

Since this is my first post after inviting my friends to check it out on facebook, I'll actually open it to a question: what are your go-to recipes?