Rosemary Roasted Chicken

I have a couple really exciting things to share with you all, dear blog readers. It has nothing to do with weddings or babies or puppies or lottery wins or even remarkable football seasons. It has to do with my awesome friend, Sarah, who works in a cooking store and uses her hefty discount to buy me presents when I go to stay at her apartment for a few days. She's the craftiest person I know (and not in the Beastie Boys sense), and she always creates and gives amazing gifts (see here and the dino apron here). This time around, though, in lieu of a homemade gift it was a home assembled gift: six stackable containers each filled with a different kind of salt. I absolutely love it. Thanks, Sarah!

From top to bottom: hickory bacon, fennel, truffle, alder smoked, Hawaiian sea, and Mediterranean black salt flakes.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to use any of them I would love to hear them. Especially the alder smoked salt. It smells like a bonfire.

My second exciting thing to share is that I won a cookbook giveaway! I entered a giveaway a few weeks ago on vanilla sugar, and I completely forgot about it until I got a message letting me know that I won. I was so excited (and still am), and given the choice of three books I quickly decided on Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Thanks, Dawn!

I love Bittman, and his cookbook is as amazing as he is. Have you seen this intro to his video on NY Times? Challah! After having the book for only two days, I would highly recommend it to anyone. It's a lot of basic recipes followed up with suggestions for tweaking them. It also has a lot of explanations for why to do things instead of just giving you a bunch of recipes and sending you on your way. I can hear him saying everything that he writes, which makes it all the more fun to read. You should check out the book, and you should also check out vanilla sugar for some amazing and inventive recipes.

The first thing I made from my new cookbook was a roasted chicken. I've cooked a few whole chickens in my day, but none have turned out as well as this one did. One of the best things about roasting a whole chicken is how cheap it is. As you can see in the picture I got a 3.36lb. chicken for only $6.69. Not too bad for a free range bird from right here in Minnesota. It's also pretty rewarding to pull a beautifully cooked bird out of the oven.

For the complete recipe, click here.

This is all you'll need: a chicken, 3 tbsp olive oil, salt, and pepper. You can add herbs or you can leave them out. I used rosemary and garlic, but the garlic missed out on its photo op.

Start by turning the oven on to 450. After five minutes put a large cast iron skillet on a rack placed low in the oven.

While the oven is heating, rinse the chicken and pat it dry. Rub with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Top with rosemary sprigs or whatever herbs you're using.

After the skillet has been heading for 10 minutes or so or the oven hits 450, add the chicken to the skillet, breast side up. If you're using garlic, throw a few peeled cloves in the pan. Cook for 40 to 50 minutes or until a thermometer stuck into the meaty thigh reaches 155-165.

While pushing the the rack with the chicken back into the oven my hand had a little run in with another sizzlingly hot rack, leaving me with this little blemish. Don't forgot to wear your oven mitts, kids!

As expected, when anything with (or often without) oil is in my oven at a temperature above 400, my fire alarm went off. Thankfully this was a good 30 minutes into the cooking process, and a quick jab with a meat thermometer let me know that my chicken had already reached the 160 mark.

Pretty bird. Pretty bird. Let that pretty bird rest for a few minutes before serving.

Here is the nicely seared underside. Coming up next: Chicken Noodle Soup!