Oven-Roasted Chicken With Veggies

An alternative to slow cooking instead of your run-of-the-mill crockpot recipes.

Have you ever seen a more beautiful chicken?

This slow, oven-roasted chicken is easy and will impress anyone you cook it for! Not to mention, did you see how good it looks?!

Ball on a Budget Y'all

Wanna know the best part of this recipe? You can make it all for under $30 and feed yourself or others more than once!

Ingredients

• One whole chicken, size chosen to your liking 4-6lbs (Ask yourself here, how many mouths do you want to feed)

• Red potatoes

• One small package of baby carrots (I used rainbow carrots for aesthetic purposes)

• 1 whole white onion

• 1 lemon

• Fresh thyme

• Fresh dill

• Fresh parsley

• Fresh garlic, 6-9 cloves

• 1 cup of butter, 2 sticks

• Olive oil

• Salt

• Pepper

• Paprika

Oooooo baby...

Directions

1. Start by preheating your oven to 450. Prepare your thawed chicken by removing innards and rinsing if need be. Take an oven roaster pan and lightly drizzle olive oil on the bottom. Place chicken in the center.

2. Take a paring knife and gently cut an incision on the chicken skin and place small slices of butter underneath. The more the merrier here. I typically put about two slices on each breast, and then two slices on each thigh. Butter in between the meat and skin here really helps add moisture so that you can have a juicy delicious chicken!

3. Chop your onion into 1-inch long pieces, reserve half. Peel half of your garlic cloves, slice lemon in half, and rinse thyme (reserve half) and dill. Stuff all of these inside the chicken. Add 4-5 tbsp of butter inside as well, and close hole by stuffing half of lemon inside, like a cork.

4. Season chicken by sprinkling salt, pepper and paprika over top chicken. Finely chop fresh parsley and add on top as well. Then take remaining lemon half and squeeze the juice all over the top of your chicken. All the juices... yum...

5. Chop up your red potatoes and distribute around the chicken in the pan, do the same with your baby carrots and chopped onion. Then mince remaining garlic cloves and sprinkle on top of chicken, potatoes and carrots.

6. Take remaining butter and cut slices to place on top of potatoes. Take remaining thyme and place around potatoes as well.

7. Place your chicken roast in the oven and cook for 20 mins.

8. Lower oven to 350 and bake for additional 20 mins per pound of chicken. (So a 5lb chicken would cook for an hour and 20 mins.)

9. After every 30 mins, baste your chicken with melted butter and juices in bottom of the pan, and stir veggies.

10. Chicken should be around 160f internally, so frequently check your chicken's temperature with a meat thermometer, or purchase a chicken that comes with a thermometer in the chicken already that will pop up when your chicken is done!

11. Lastly, cut that bad boy up and enjoy!!

Tips and Tricks

I've made this recipe a handful of times and here are my go-to tips and tricks!

Basting:

This is a slow cooker, yes, but you do need to frequently check on your little chicken in his warm and cozy oven. Basting is soooo important!! No one likes a dry chicken! So make sure to baste every 30 mins. This recipe is good to cook maybe a day when you are working from home or for a weekend get-together.

Temperature:

After making this dish a million times, I've found that a chicken that comes with a thermometer usually comes out the best, maybe my meat thermometer just isn't as good as it used to be, but my chicken almost always comes out it's best juiciest self when I look for that red and white thermometer to pop out of the chicken itself.

Lemon:

I have to say, the added flavor the lemon brings is out of this world, so if you want to go a little crazy and add more than 1, by all means... Go. For. It.

Spices:

I intentionally did not add measurements of how much salt, pepper, paprika, and so on to this recipe because i firmly believe in eyeballing that shit. Every chicken is different, so if i said 1 tsp of salt and you bought a 6lb chicken and mine was a 4lb chicken, then that may not be enough for you! If your chicken looks pretty good and covered by that stuff, then you're doing it right. (See first photo of prepped-uncooked chicken)

Overall

Enjoy the process of making this dish! It makes the final product so much more rewarding!