Roasted Chicken

I have been wanting to make a roasted chicken after I used up the last of my saved turkey stock. Plus believe it or not I have never roasted a whole chicken before, just my awesome holiday turkeys. So We went to Granville Island and headed straight to the butcher I love. Really we totally went straight there, I forgot to get cash and everything, I was way too excited for this.

While reading up on how people pre-game roast I saw it was a trend that people risen and pat the chicken dry, like as dry and you can possibly get it. Then they would take a seasoning paste and rub the chicken down. Originally I was going to treat the chicken like a turkey and wet brine it for a day, but I decided that I was going to try new things and went with the paste. My paste here is made of :

1 1/2 tspn onion powder 

1 1/2 tspn rosemary 

1 1/2 tspn Italian seasoning mix

4 cloves of garlic 

1 1/2 tspn of salt 

pepper to taste 

I pasted it up with olive oil, I just added it little by little until it was as thick as I wanted it.

As you can see I couldn't find all of my measuring spoons besides the 1 1/2 tspn, worked out just fine :)

After I made my paste I gave my little chicken a pasty rub down. I went under the skin with the paste and inside the carcass.

Then I did something super new to me and grabbed a cast iron pan (I never use them, they just sit there looking sad at me all the time, until now) and heated up some olive oil. I browned all the sides of the chicken and let it take a rest for about 10 minutes. I am sure the poor thing was all tired after all the skin treatment It just had. After the 10 minute nap I wrapped the top with tin foil and put everything into the oven for about 1 1/2 hours at 375, until it was 175 degrees in the thick part of the breast. About 1 hour unto the baking I went in and took off the foil to crisp up all the skin. I am looking forward to making more of these little guys.