An easy recipe for a deliciously moist baked garlic rosemary chicken with a hint of lemon that’s perfect to have as a main or to compliment any salad.
Am I the only one who gets intimidated by whole pieces of poultry?
I mean, I know I’m bigger than the bird itself but it just looks like a highly complex jigsaw puzzle and I never know when to start when one gets presented in front of me so I have yet to try to bake one myself…
Until the other day that is!
Yup, lovelies, this week I experienced baking whole chicken for the first time in my life and to be honest, I don’t know what I was so afraid of!
The process of prepping the chicken only took me 15 minutes and after that it was just me playing the waiting game while the oven did all the work for me!
My family is a big fan of BBQ chicken but since we had a bunch of rosemary that was growing out in the garden, I decided to make lemon rosemary garlic chicken instead.
Which was a good choice on mother deer and I’s part because we love our rosemary and garlic but brother deer and lil’ bun weren’t too fond of the flavor profile of it.
But no matter, because that means more for me! 😛
Since there were two chickens, we didn’t end up finishing all of it in one night so I ended up having the leftovers with a side of sweet potatoes and veggies for lunch or shredded on top of lettuce from our garden for lunch 🙂
If you don’t have enough time to spare to bake a whole chicken or baking whole poultry still scares you, you can also use this recipe for pre-cut pieces of chicken (ex. separated thighs or breasts).
Sometimes I would do it this way because we don’t always buy whole chicken and baking smaller cuts of chicken ends up only taking a fraction of the time!
Baked garlic rosemary lemon chicken recipe
- 2 small chicken (about 4lbs total)
- 12 cloves of garlic
- 1 lemon
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/4 cup fresh rosemary chopped finely
- salt and pepper
- 6 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 1 tablespoon melted butter
- Preheat your oven to 400F
- Zest and squeeze the juice from the lemon into a mixing bowl. Then cut the rind into 8 wedges and set it aside.
- Finely dice 8 cloves of garlic and place it in the mixing bowl. Whisk in the olive oil and chopped rosemary.
- Liberally season the inside of the chicken with salt and pepper. Smash the remaining 4 cloves of garlic and place 2 in each chicken. Then stuff in 4 wedges of lemon rind along with 3 sprigs of rosemary into each of the chickens.
- Stuff half of the mixing bowl mixture under the skin of each chicken. I used 1/3 of it on under the skin on the breast side and the remaining 2/3 on the thigh side.
- Pat the skin of your chicken dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 400F for 10 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and brush the butter on the skin. Then return it to the oven and bake at 350F for 45 – 50 minutes until fully cooked. Check with a meat thermometer to be safe. (If you are baking just thighs/breasts reduce bake time to 25 – 30 mins)
- Remove the chicken from the oven and let cool for 8-10 minutes before slicing.
YUM! Great Thanksgiving recipe!
It took me years to cook a whole chicken and like you, I think ‘What was I worried about?’ Now, I cook one at the drop of a hat. They look really delicious. Thanks for the recipe!
Happy to have joined this party. xx