The World's Easiest Chicken

My friend Cam cooked this delicious chicken for my husband and I when we were visiting Chicago months and months ago. It was SO. GOOD.

I couldn't bring myself to cook it, though, because it meant sticking my hand inside a chicken to remove all its nasty chicken parts. Ew.

Finally my craving for this chicken grew greater than my disgust. Also, I bought rubber gloves. Also, my husband and I are in the process of moving into a new home, and we are in that stage where everything is a disaster. It looks like a tornado hit our downstairs, and our upstairs is all boxes. Needless to say, the kitchen is a bit of a mess. We're short on pots and pans (which box were those in again?) and have only minimal cooking supplies (olive oil, salt, and... that's pretty much it).

Because of our move, we were both starving. Seriously, graduate students are NOT used to days of manual labor... I racked my brain for something simple for dinner that would be 1) super filling, and 2) super easy. Cam's dish came to mind. It was time to bite the bullet.

Cook this chicken. Seriously. It's simple, delicious, and completely gluten free!

Cam's Chicken
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken fryer (4-5 pounds)
1 onion, peeled and quartered
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 sticks celery, chopped (optional)
2 T. olive oil
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
dash of Kosher salt

Directions:
*Preheat the oven to 450*
1. Remove all of the icky stuff from inside the chickens (bag of giblets)
2. Stuff the onion, celery pieces, and garlic inside the chicken
3. Rub the outside of the chicken with olive oil
4. Sprinkle with rosemary and salt
5. Stick one sprig of rosemary on either side of the chicken, under the skin
6. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes (this will make the skin crispy)
7. Turn the oven down to 350 and bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes

Done! You can use the juice that bakes out of the chicken to pour over rice (yummy!) or serve it with oven-baked potatoes like we did last night. So, so, so, sooooo good. So simple. So affordable.

Are you visiting us soon? Because we will probably bake you this chicken. Yum.
Photo borrowed from http://redneckrecipes.blogspot.com. Soon I will find my camera in this move and post real photos of what I've been up to!