Yikes! It’s been a while

I can’t believe I haven’t posted a recipe in so long!  Trust me when I say I’ve been cooking, but most of the time I’be been cooking things I already wrote about.  For example, last week I made a roasted chicken, and today, I’m planning on making roasted chicken chili with the leftovers.

Though, I have made a few new dishes and I’ll have to blog about them.  I’ll have to make them again since I have no pictures from the first time I made it.  See, I’ve been testing some recipes from a book I just bought and I’m pretty excited to try these new and healthier recipes.  So far, they’ve been very tasty and very easy.  Watch, now I jinxed it.

Roasted Chicken – Updated version

Roasted Chicken

[I originally started this post in January. Just saw that it was still sitting unpublished and decided to publish it, just how I wrote it in January.]
It’s been a long time since I posted anything here. That’s not to say that I haven’t cooked. Just nothing “new”. But being stuck in a rut of sorts can be helpful in getting me out of that same rut. I’ve been craving a roasted chicken lately. It’s been a long time since I’ve made it, and I’ve been making it the same way for a while. So, I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to try something different. I finally decided to make my own spice rub. I’ve seen it enough on TV and decided to give it a shot.

I mixed cumin, salt, pepper, and coriander with some olive oil until I liked how it tasted. Then, I rubbed it on the chicken and placed the covered chicken into the oven.

Follow the original recipe here. The only thing I did differently is the spice rub.

The day I made this chicken, a friend was visiting and she seemed to enjoy it. 🙂

Birthday Celebration

Birthday Celebration

I know that it looks like I haven’t cooked anything in months.  And it’s almost true.  I have cooked things I already wrote about and have a few more recipes I haven’t posted.  But let me start with the birthday celebration which was in early March.

I made two roasted chickens, just to be sure I had enough. But one was enough. Everyone seemed to love it. I hope they weren’t just polite but actually liked it.

I also made:

• Seafood salad
• Salmon “pizza” that was inspired by Emeril’s Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese Pizza Bites. Mine had regular cream cheese instead of goat cheese and using store-bought dough made it extra quick.
• Baked potatoes
• Marinated mushrooms, and these really did seem to be a hit

Additionally, I bought a lot of marinated things such as marinated tomatoes, mushrooms, and pattisons (baby squash of some kind).

Roasted Chicken

This is how my family likes my roasted chicken.  It’s quite simple, really.  All you need is a chicken (or any part of a chicken that you like, such as chicken legs, or chicken thighs, or wings, or chicken breasts).  Because I cut away much of the fat in the chicken, this turns out to be a lower-fat dish than you’d normally expect. Here is my method:

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken of about 3-4 pounds (or 3-4 pounds package of chicken legs/thighs)
1 bottle of McCormic Rotisserie Chicken seasoning. I use this liberally, and I suggest you do too, but use as much as you want. (If you don’t want to use the seasoning, using just salt and pepper works exceptionally well too and I’ve done my chicken that way many a-time.)

Steps:
1. Clean the chicken.
That’s right, get your hands dirty, get all that yucky film that’s under the skin off, remove as much fat as possible (don’t worry, you’ll have plenty for the chicken to be moist), and remove any remaining feathers that are still on the chicken.
2. Loosen the skin where you can and pull it away from the body of the chicken and sprinkle the seasoning very liberally (under the skin). The aim is to cover every area that you can get to. If it looks like too much, it’s not. You want it covered.
3. Put the chicken skin back on (remember you “peeled” the skin back in step 2) and sprinkle the seasoning on top of the skin, very liberally.  Salt to taste (the McCormic seasoning doesn’t have enough salt, if any).
4. LET MARINATE FOR AT LEAST 2 HOURS. It’s better if you let it marinate overnight.

If you’ve let the chicken season over night, bring it up to room temperature before placing it into the oven (yes, let it sit on the counter for a few hours; it will be fine, you’re going to cook it and all the icky scary bacteria will be dead).

5. When you are ready to cook the chicken, preheat the oven to 375-400 degrees, place chicken into an oven-safe dish, cover with aluminum foil, and cook for about 30 minutes covered. Then, remove the foil so the chicken can get a warm golden color. Also, at this time, while you’re removing the foil, you’ll notice there will be some juices at the bottom of the pan. I use these juiced to baste the chicken and I do this only once.

The chicken is done after about an hour or so, or when the juices run clear.

When it’s done, let it rest under aluminum foil for about 5-10 minutes.  The resting will ensure that it will be juicy and the foil will ensure that it’s still hot/warm when you serve it.

That’s it! If you try it, let me know how it turned out. I’m trying to capture every little detail of how I prepare it, so it probably looks more complicated than it really is. I’ll also post a picture next time I make it. Don’t think 1 leftover drumstick is gonna make a great picture. 😉

Looks good enough to eat already, but still raw

Just out of the oven. YUM!