The Art of Simple Chicken

The Art of Simple Chicken

We've made this chicken, from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, twice now. Both times, the resulting bird has been juicy and tasty.

Start with a high-quality chicken (free-range, no hormones added, etc.). This is the most important step.

The day before you intend to roast it, clean the bird out and rub it with salt and pepper.

An hour before you intend to roast it, remove it from the fridge and let it rest on the counter. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Then (and here's the second most important part), start the bird breast-side up and set your timer for 20 minutes. Flip her every twenty minutes until she's done (maybe an hour and a half for a four-pound chicken).

We roasted the chicken on a v-rack, placing some sliced yellow onion in the (dry) pan below. We served it with red potatoes tossed with olive oil and rosemary and roasted, covered, on the lowest rack of the oven. The chicken cooked on the middle rack at the same time. Also along for the ride was broccoli and fresh dinner rolls. And, of course, the perfectly carmelized yellow onions and accompanying jus, which we sneakily referred to as sauce.