My baked chicken recipe is still a work in progress but with the few times I have cooked this dish for the family, they all absolutely love it! They have to, they got no other choice, LOL.
As I have written a countless times, I don’t really measure when I cook so the following are the ingredients that I have mostly used for these baked chicken dish:
- 1 piece free range chicken, approximately 1.2 – 1.5 k (I use Magnolia free range chicken)
- 2 pieces freshly squeezed dalandan juice (you know the big seedless variety with rough skin, yes, that’s the one) or freshly squeezed juice from two oranges
- dry herbs (I use McCormick Italian seasoning, a staple in the kitchen)
- rock salt
- finely chopped garlic
- potato marbles (brush away the dirt if you want to keep the skin on, or peel away the skin) or regular potatoes, cut in cubes
- cubes of carrots
- whole garlic heads with the top cut off
- room temperature butter
After thawing the chicken in the refrigerator, clean the chicken by gently rubbing (rock) salt on the skin to remove the “chicken smell” (or lansa smell). Be sure to clean the inside of the chicken with salt. Wash off the salt. Put some dry herbs and a little salt under the chicken skin if you can manage to do that.
In a deep bowl, mix together the freshly squeezed citrus juice, a little bit of salt and dry herbs. I don’t measure how much herbs I put.
“Bathe” the chicken with the juice and herbs mix. You can have the chicken sit in the bowl for some time if you want to while you take care of the potatoes, carrots and garlic.
Pour a little bit of the juice mix on a baking dish before you put the chicken in it.
Rub a little room temp butter on the chicken. When the chicken is in the baking dish, pour a little bit of the juice mix on the chicken.
Sprinkle dried herbs, finely chopped garlic (and a little salt if you prefer) on the chicken. Do the sprinkling while the chicken is in the baking dish to have the herbs still fall on the baking dish.
Bake for 20 minutes (I forgot, you have to turn on the oven somewhere in the process of preparing the chicken).
After 20 minutes, remove the chicken with whatever you can use to get it off the baking dish (I use a big tong) and remove the “blood” from the chicken’s inside. How? With a big tong, I just turn over the rear end of the chicken with the opening and let the liquid pour out.
Pour a little of the juice inside the chicken. Put dried herbs and salt as well as crushed garlic inside the chicken too.
Set the oven to 40-50 minutes then put back the chicken with the potatoes, carrots and whole garlic heads. You can put a little olive oil on the garlic heads. Pour the remaining juice on the chicken. If you prefer to make another batch of this juice mix, do so, if the thought of putting the one you used to bathe the chicken seems yuck to you.
If you are not ready to serve the chicken, do not remove from the oven yet.
You know the garlic heads? Remove the softened garlic inside, smash with your fork and mix with your rice. Ahhh… so good.
Note:
One time I used foil on the chicken for the first 20 minutes.
The other time I didn’t put any foil on the chicken. Both times turned out ok.
One time I didn’t have butter and the chicken skin browned easily, the skin got dried out so I had to turn the chicken over for the second cooking time. It turned out ok too.
You can use regular chicken if free range is not available but you get a lot of fatty chicken oil in the cooking dish. Our chicken looks emaciated because there is very little fat under the skin.
When the chicken has been eaten, save the bones (ask the one who will eat to not put the bones in their mouths, haha!). You can use these bones to make chicken broth.
You can save the garlic heads for other dishes like fried rice or mix with butter for your buttered garlic toast.
Other baked chicken recipes here.
