For What It's Worth


Thursday, August 31, 2023

What's Cooking?: Weeknight chicken

A little something different today - after posting TWO weeks in a row with TWO LONG reviews!! Brace yourselves, there may even be another one coming next week! 

retro looking woman wearing a red dress and apron. Her hands covered in flour and dough from the bowl below her. Cookbook is laying open to the left


My mother-in-law has been raving about this weeknight chicken recipe for at least a year now. I don't really eat whole chicken (or chicken) very often so I never tried it. There was gorgeous, free range chicken on sale last weekend ($8!!) so I thought I would finally give it a go and....

Ta-Da!

A roasted chicken laying on a plate with fall leaves around the edges

Before you say...yeah, ok Karen, that looks good - congratulations, you cooked a chicken....The secret to this game changing recipe is just how easy and hands off it is.

You preheat a 12 inch pan in a 450 degree oven. Meanwhile you brush the bird with melted butter and season. I sprayed mine with olive oil spray and seasoned with  Montreal Steak Seasoning and paprika per my MIL's instructions.

Throw it in the oven at 450 for 35 minutes, turn the oven off and leave it another 30-ish minutes until it reaches the proper temperature. And that's it! 

This is honestly the best tasting chicken I've ever made. It tasted just like a rotisserie chicken from the store. Super, melt in your mouth juicy. Surprisingly, it also made very little mess. There are some dripping to make a pan sauce if you wanted but otherwise not much to clean up. 

The original recipe is from America's Test Kitchen  but if you can't see it on their site without a subscription/membership, it is also here on Nom Nom Paleo. She changes the recipe a tad by using ghee and includes a pan sauce recipe but the basic method is the same. 

Even better, I'm using the leftovers for chicken and dumplings tonight. The PNW decided to flip the switch and dive right into fall with cooler temps and rain, so I get to make my first soup of the season. 


20 comments:

  1. "yeah, ok Karen, that looks good - congratulations, you cooked a chicken"
    😂😂😂

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  2. You're hilarious, and you made a beautiful chicken. My kid promised the Chick-Fil-A cow that she would not eat beef back when she was five, so we ate and eat a lot of chicken.

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    1. It was the easiest, tastiest and least messy chicken I've ever made. I'll probably have today chicken more often now.

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    2. And I love how they tricked people into being nice to cows by eating chickens. Not a lot of logic there lol

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  3. It turned out great! My new gift to myself this year was a pellet smoker, so I find myself smoking chickens regularly. They're just really simple to make and are so versatile. My secret step is brining them in buttermilk overnight. It makes them so moist and flavorful!

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    1. We bought a pellet grill a few years ago and chicken is amazing on there! One we've doing a lot recently is boneless, skinless thighs - I marinate them in yogurt with whatever seasoning I'm using for 2 hours.

      The thing with this whole one is just how much it tastes like rotisserie chicken with basically zero effort. No basting or tenting or anything.

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    2. Exactly! It almost feels like cheating lol

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  4. That's one yummy looking roasted chicken. I love rotisserie so if it takes anything like that I'll definitely have to give it a try. And it couldn't be easier with the oven doing all the work. Nice!

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    1. It is SO unbelievably juicy with 0 extra work. I was shocked. My MIL has been bugging me to make it but I didn't see what the big deal was lol

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  5. As a vegetarian and someone who is a disaster in the kitchen I'll pass on this one. My husband on the other hand would be positively drooling. Well done you on producing what I'm sure to many would be a yummy roast chicken.

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    1. I don't eat a lot of meat (And I went years without eating chicken) but this is so easy.

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  6. I make whole chicken a lot in the Winter time so I'll have to try this when the temps come down.

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    1. It seems like a generic chicken recipe but it tastes JUST like a rotisserie chicken with zero effort

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  7. It does look good though, and I have never cooked a whole chicken, so I am still impressed. But I did used to buy rotisserie chickens sometimes, does that count? Lol I'm glad it came out so good!

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    1. It counts! lol And is probably cheaper. I had gotten this one on sale but when I went to get another it was like $16. The bigger birds are a lot cheaper but the 3-4 pounders cost so much more! Weird.

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  8. My son still eats poultry, and seeing that the rotisserie chickens at Wegmans went from $6 to $10, I will definitely give this a go. Thanks for sharing the recipe and for sharing the free link. 👍

    We had a week of very chilly days, in fact it was cold at night (40s), but we are back up into the higher 80s again and on Wednesday it's going to be in the 90s. Yuck. 😥

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    1. I haven't made a whole chicken in years. I only grabbed that one because it was on sale and my MIL has been bugging me to try this.
      I went back this weekend and the prices had shot up so...I'll have to keep my eyes out for sales.
      The smaller ones cost so much more than the larger birds but the large ones don't work for this. You need the smaller rotisserie sized ones.
      It is totally fall here. I had to pull out the sweaters and sweatshirts lol

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