The Strategic Retreat

Best Baked Chicken, Easy and Fast

Best Baked Chicken

I’ve been making a lot of chicken recently, it’s tasty, it’s inexpensive, it’s nutritious and, with my recipe, it’s fast and easy. After about 5 minutes of prep and 1 hour of cooking you’ll have yourself the centerpiece of a great meal.

The first thing to do is gather the supplies shown below.

Baked chicken supplies

Needed supplies are; a lemon, a pad of butter, salt, pepper, garlic, rosemary, a little chili p and -of course- a chicken. I prefer to get a nice fat kambung chicken from the wet market but since I now live in San Jose for some reason, a roaster from the local Safeway will do. It does save me the trouble of cutting off the head and feet. So I have that going for me.

wet market chicken

First, clean up your defrosted chicken a bit. Pull anything out of the inside that no longer belongs, cut off any lingering heads or talons and run some water through it. Then pat the inside dry and preheat your oven to 440F(225C).

Next, shake some salt and pepper on the inside of your bird, trying to get a nice dusting on the inner walls. Then sprinkle about a a table spoon of rosemary in there, a few fresh sprigs work just as well. Next, add a teaspoon of chili p and about 3 cloves of crushed garlic. After that shove in 1 sliced lemon and your inner chicken is at peace.

Ready for the oven

To prepare the outer chicken; rub it with softened butter then sprinkle the outside with salt, pepper, rosemary and, the always delicious, chili p.

Put that in a dish of some kind and throw it in the oven. 1 hour later and you’ve got yourself a delicious bird. Let it sit for about 10 minutes then cut it up and serve. The beauty of cooking it at a high temp is that you’ll get a nice brown color and a really moist bird. Plus, you can throw it in right before Jeopardy and take it out after The Wheel, saving yourself the strain of an annoying kitchen timer.

Canadian thanksgiving

Quick, simple and delicious. That’s how I roll.

About Jeff

Jeff was born in the back of a War Game Store on the day the first Star Trek movie came out, to a computer programmer mother and a father who wrote the story for Dragon's Lair. Jeff has an MBA, a CSM, and a penchant for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong.