Everyday Food Spiced Roasted Chicken

We eat a lot of chicken in our household, and when I say a lot I mean a lot. My two boys love any type of poultry and will eat all the leftovers of a dish if given the opportunity. I love chicken also, but I tend to get bored with the same roasted chicken recipes, so I try to frequently change my chicken recipes and menu plans. The May issue of Everyday Food magazine had a recipe for Spiced Roasted Chicken, which looked promising for a change from my family's normal roasted chicken routine.

This recipe has 9 ingredients and the prep work takes approximately 10 minutes, with 1 hour and 20 minutes of total cooking time (if using a 4 lb bird). All of the ingredients are basic and I had no problems finding them at my local grocery store. I did have to buy a 7 pound chicken, there were no smaller birds available. Due to the much larger size of my bird, than the 4 pound bird used in the recipe, I had to modify some aspects of the cooking. I started the recipe in a dutch oven as stated in the recipe, but the bird did not crisp up as much as I expected, so I switched to a roasting pan for the last hour of cooking time. Additionally, since I was using a much bigger bird, my total cooking time took an hour and a half longer. I followed everything else in the recipe as stated, with no modifications.

The chicken in this recipe turned out very moist. My two boys enjoyed the chicken immensely and I liked how tender the entire chicken was. The vegetables didn't turn out as well and we didn't eat them. They ended up softer than we prefer, but this probably had a lot to do with the increased cooking time due to bird size. This recipe creates a moist chicken, which if you use a bigger bird like I did, would make enough leftovers for multiple additional meals.

For the recipe go to Everyday Food Spice Roasted Chicken