Roasted Chicken

This week I endeavored to roast my first chicken! I started with this recipe for Juicy Roasted Chicken and made a few changes based on some other research I did.  The recipe is heavy on butter, but having just watched Julie & Julia, I was reminded how much butter really does make everything taste delicious. So I decided not to skimp on it this time and my, was it tasty! The flavor was excellent but even better was the tenderness of the meat--so moist it fell off the bone.  After seeing the amount of butter drained off in the bottom of my pan, I will definitely try reducing it to 1/4 cup or 1/3 cup to see if it still produces the same tender, juicy result.

I used a dutch oven and I kept the lid on until the last 15 minutes when I removed the lid to let the skin get a little more golden.  After removing the chicken from the dutch oven, I moved the pot to the stove and mixed some water and flour with the leftover butter and drippings in the pot to make a gravy.

Ingredients:
1 3-4 lb whole chicken
1/2 cup butter
1 Tbsp onion powder
1 tsp dried parsley
2 cloves garlic
1 stalk celery
salt and pepper

Rinse the chicken inside and out and pat dry with paper towels.  Truss the chicken if desired (if you don't know how to do this--look up an instructional video).  Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Salt and pepper the entire chicken liberally,  inside the cavity and the entire outside of the chicken. Sprinkle onion powder and parsley over the chicken, inside and out.  Cut celery stalk into 4 pieces and stuff inside chicken cavity with 3 Tbsp butter and the garlic clove.  Cut remaining butter into small pads and spread them over the outside of the chicken, rubbing into the chicken slightly so they stay in place.  Place chicken in roasting pan or dutch oven and cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes.  Turn down oven temperature to 350 degrees and cook an additional 20 minutes per pound of meat or until chicken reaches an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees.  Let the chicken rest about 15 minutes after taking it out of the oven so the juices can settle.