whole chicken (4-5 pounds)4 t. salt
2 t. sugar
1/4 t. ground cloves
1/4 t. ground allspice
1/4 t. ground nutmeg
1/4 t. cinnamon
10 cloves garlic, crushed
In a bowl, mix the salt, sugar, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Rub the chicken with the mixture. (If you don't want to eat skin, then make sure you rub under the chicken's skin.) Cover chicken, and place in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
Stuff the chicken cavity with the garlic. Place the chicken, breast side down, on a rack in a roasting pan.
Roast 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce heat to 450 degrees, and continue roasting 15 minutes. Baste chicken with pan drippings, reduce heat to 425 degrees F, and continue roasting 30 minutes, to an internal temperature of 180 degrees F. Let stand 20 minutes before serving.
Notes: As I was given this chicken and having never before cooked a whole chicken, I turned to allrecipes.com and found this recipe. The spices may seem weird on meat, but it was sooooo tasty. We served it with asparagus (thanks for all these cooking hints!) and had, what was probably, our first carb-free meal. I didn't realize there was a 24-hour marinating period, so it got only eight. But I can imagine it would have been that much better given the full 24 hours.
Because our chicken was slightly larger than 4 pounds, it took longer to get to the 180-degree internal temperature, by about 10 minutes. And I have no roasting pan so used a cooling rack on a cooking sheet which worked fine.
1 comment:
so i made this a couple of weeks ago and my whole family LOVED it. seriously. my girl who is pretty much a vegetarian, gobbled up her meat. my other kids couldn't get enough either. it's real tasty and real juicy.
we had a bigger chicken and so it took a little longer to cook, but we just cooked until our thermometer reached 180.
we made some rolls and enjoyed left-over chicken sandwiches for the next couple of days - my favorite part.
Post a Comment