Life can be simple: 3 step Roast Chicken

Truth be told, I have many ideas on what to cook for dinner. But since I'm busy mugging for exams, Mr G said ok let's do something really simple but yummy. He said why not make that simple roast chicken you made for me very very long time ago. Sometimes, I think men's memory are just a lot wider in capacity than women's. Haha!! But they do feign ignorance if you are asking them to recall something they don't want to :P Ok so much for hard truth!

In any case, I do recall baking a roast chicken with just butter, salt and pepper or something like that and it turned out pretty good. So I went to search for a simple roast chicken recipe.

To be honest, I call this a 3 step recipe. It is super easy peasy you will cry when you eat the roast chicken. See my modifications or comments in blue.

Ingredients:

1 kampung chicken or spring chicken (depending on which part of the world you come from)
olive oil or softened butter (I would definitely suggest butter)
1 tbsp salt (go easy on the salt if you are using butter)
pepper
lemon (optional) I used 1 lemon, cut into small pieces
fresh herbs (optional) I used Nomu African Rub but you can use italian herbs too
garlic cloves (optional) I used a good handful

Method:

Preheat your oven to 220 or 200 degrees celsius. This depends on your oven's temperature for roasting chicken. Please adjust accordingly.
Wash the chicken thoroughly to get rid of any innards in the cavity. You may also want to examine the chicken for any feathers that have not been plucked out. Haha!! This is where the OCDness comes in :P Pat your chicken dry. I mean really dry, even in the nooks and crannies are and don't forget the cavity too!
Rub the olive oil or butter all over the chicken, paying special attention to the chicken wings and drumsticks. The oil/butter helps the chicken skin to be crisp and golden.
Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the chicken. I also add the Nomu rub to this step. You can be very generous here.
If you like, you can add the lemon, herbs and garlic cloves inside the cavity of the chicken. You may want to use a toothpick or satay stick to secure the cavity so nothing comes out whilst you are turning the chicken. As usual, the lazy me never did that and some of it came out while I was turning the chicken. Whatever :P
Place the chicken, breast-side up in a pan or lift it off the pan with a roasting rack and roughly chopped vegetables.
Put the chicken in the oven and lower the oven temperature to 200 or 180 degrees. Roast the chicken for about 50 minutes undisturbed. This literally means don't flip or touch the chicken at all. Try!!
At the 50th minute, you may turn the chicken over to give it an even brown colour throughout. Continue to bake for another 30 minutes.

Notes:

The chicken will take about total roasting time of 50 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on the size of your chicken. However, as I don't have a meat thermometer, I usually use my eyes to gauge. When the chicken is golden brown all over, it indicates that it should be fully cooked inside as well. It took me a total of 60 to 80 minutes to bake the chicken.

This is exactly how golden brown it looks. Warning! When you cut open the chicken immediately, there may be hot steam. This is a perfect indicator that you need to eat it NOW.

We paired the chicken with homemade coleslaw. If you must ask how to make the homemade coleslaw, it is pretty simple. Shred some cabbage, carrots and dice onions. Add mayo, salt, pepper and abit of milk and chill it till you are ready to eat your roast chicken.

I remembered eating a drumstick and a wing and the next I looked, the chicken was almost all gone!! Mr G literally ate the rest of it. I was very shocked. But this also means the chicken is very very good. So now you must get going to try this. You won't regret it for sure. No roasted chicken in the supermarkets can compare to this at all.

I'm submitting this to Bake Along organized by Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids, Lena from Frozen wings and Joyce of kitchenflavours.