Whole Roast Chicken

I took myself by surprise when I brought home a whole raw chicken, I normally buy the ready to eat  from Stew  Leonard's and never bother to cook it myself. I guess it was about time  & my culinary curiosity got the better of me. I am thrilled with the result  as I have used  very minimum oil and have played with the herbs and spices that I enjoy. It tastes very good and nothing beats home made stuff, also I have to mention here that it is not at all cumbersome to cook the whole bird contrary to my earlier impression of how messy this whole affair could get.

So here is the recipe for cooking the whole chicken,hope you will like it and give it a try .

Preparation Time: 20 minutes ( excluding the marination time )
Cooking Time: Little less than 2 hours

Ingredients:
Whole Chicken: 1 weighs about 3 1/2 -4 pounds
Garlic : 8-10 cloves
Rosemary: 3 -4 sprigs
Thyme: 3-4 sprigs
Lemon: 4 tbsp
tangerine juice: 4 tbsp
Crushed peppercorn: 1 tbsp
Cayenne pepper: 1 tsp or to your taste
Olive Oil: 2 tbsp
Kosher salt: 1 tbsp or to your taste

Method:

take the whole chicken & wash it under cold water.remove the giblets from the neck. Pat dry it with a paper towel.
Take the lemon juice,tangerine juice in a bowl and add crushed peppercorn,cayenne pepper,olive oil and kosher salt and rub this on the insides and outside of the chicken thoroughly. Take the thyme and rosemary sprigs and stick them in all the cavities along with garlic cloves. Now put this in a large vessel( cover it with the cling film) or a 1 gallon zip lock bag and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 450 degree f and take a roaster pan,if you do not have the roaster pan,take any regular oven tray and cut a sheet of aluminium foil and   coil the aluminium sheet and  make an 8 with the coiled sheet and put this on the tray and let your chicken sit on this breast side up. Cook the chicken at 450 degree f for the first 15 minutes  covered with an aluminium foil ,then bring down the temperature to 400degree f and cook till the thermometer in the chicken pops out it takes roughly 1 1/2 hours. Keep basting the chicken with the left over liquid from the marination.You can also use butter if you like while basting the chicken.  You can also choose to broil the chicken when it is nearly done to give the skin a charcoal burned look.

Notes: I have not used thermometer to check the internal temperature,I inserted a knife to see if the chicken was done after 1 1/2 hours.
I covered the chicken with an aluminium foil,as the drained liquid/juices from the chicken in the pan were splashing all over inside the oven.

The chicken needs air movement on the underneath in absence of a roaster pan,so the coiled aluminium foil comes in handy and it gets evenly cooked on all sides.

You can stuff the chicken with vegetables of your choice. I have used potato's to stuff the chicken.