Chubby Bunny

Thanksgiving Chicken

I have decided that my creative outlet for managing stress is cooking. Cooking, when done properly, seems to take away a lot of other worries and allows me to meditate.

Since Thanksgiving at home this year was a small crowd (just my parents and me; my brother stayed at school to finish up work…grad students, sigh) there was no need to make a ginormous feast. We decided a chicken would be sufficient in lieu of a turkey.

After asking and offering, Mom gave me the go-ahead for cooking dinner.

So I cleaned my very first chicken. Which wasn’t bad at all and much easier to dissect compared to most things I’ve done in bio lab. (It’s especially easy when there aren’t fumes coming at your face that cause your eyes to water..)

After trimming the fat and removing things that needed to be removed. I seasoned it.

• Lemon
• Salt
• Italian seasonings (oregano, rosemary, and whatever is handy)
• Pepper
• A pat of butter later
• Aromatic veggies: carrots, onion, celery (mirepoix!)

And then it was into the over at some temperature much higher than 375°F, which was later lowered to 375°F after 20-30 minutes. All in all, it stayed in the oven for about an hour, rested and then was cut into. Oh, and I covered it in loosely with aluminum foil during the whole process.

Et, voila! Chicken.

Yes, I bound the ankles together with string.
Because I’m a badass.

The skin wasn’t crispy, because I guess the first hit of heat wasn’t hot enough. Also, the vegetables weren’t very cooked yet, since I stuffed too many inside the cavity. This is why they say to take out the stuffing when you’re making turkey, other wise it takes forever for it to cook thoroughly or you may end up with a turkey that’s partly raw.

Fortunately, despite the veggies, the chicken was cooked.

I’m tempted, however, to get a probe thermometer (Alton Brown’s my heeeero) so that I can test the internal temperature in the future. But that’ll have to wait for now.