Baked Whole Orange Chicken

I cannot remember the last time I cooked a whole chicken..you? Anyways, I was walking through the whole food store and saw heavy traffic in the meat area so I joined the crowd. Pork tenderloin, whole chicken, and boneless skinless chicken thighs were all on sale. Hmmmm, I kinda sorta bought all three, it's 50% sale, I cannot afford to pass on these great deals. Here is my little fresh chicken :)

I looked around my kitchen, I had lemon, lime, orange, mango, pears and a couple heavily spotted bananas. I have a thing with bananas, the spottier they are, the harder it is for me to eat them. I am trying to say it in a nice way, but I think they are next to gross. I am getting off topic, so back to the chicken. I decided to use orange and lemon from the fruit bowl. My seasonings rack is overload so I knew I could pull something together to give some bold flavor. These were my ingredients and semi seasoned chicken.

And before I popped it in the oven..... I didn't have an cooking string but found a lovely tutorial on how to truss without a string on YouTube [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S14l9dx3hkw]

Ingredients

1 Whole Chicken

1 Lg Onion

1 Stalk of Celery

1 Orange

1/2 Cup of Orange Juice (if you do not want a crispy skin)

1 Tbsp of Black Pepper

1 Tbsp of Lemon Pepper

1 Tbsp of Rosemary

2 Tbsp of Butter

1 Whole Head of Garlic

A Handful of Cilantro

A Lot of Salt

Method

Remove offal and any giblets from inside the chicken. Season the inside with salt and pepper and add rosemary, thyme,cilantro, garlic, 1/2 onion, 1/2 orange sliced, and 1/2 celery. Truss chicken to keep all of this goodness inside. Season the outside with lemon pepper, salt and black pepper. You have to use a lot of salt so liberally coat every single part of the chicken with salt. Sprinkle the remaining herb,seasonings and orange slices on the bottom of the pan, and pour on 1/4 cup of orange juice. Place the beautifully seasoned chicken on top and bake for an hour and 45 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the remaining orange juice with butter just until it starts to thicken. Baste chicken with the orange butter, 30 minutes before you remove it from the oven and again at the 15 minutes to go mark. Be sure to test the temperature before you declare your chicken COOKED, it should read 170 at the breast area and 180 for the darker pieces of meat. Let stand for 15 mins and then dig in. So delicious. You can add your twist to this dish as I did. I added a bold font to the things that I learned.

Look what happened!

I needed more orange juice in the pan

I dressed it up for dinner...

Beautiful chicken

Enjoy

BNW~