First Roast Chicken Attempt

As I mentioned in a previous post, we visited Stew Leonard's in Norwalk and found some fresh chickens. The whole chicken was so tempting - the color of the chicken looked natural, not the yellow color that you find in mass supermarkets, and the price was right - so I decided to bring it home to attempt my first roast chicken. Sadly, the cooking process did not turn out as I expected, but the chicken was so very tasty.


I followed the cooking method from Julia Child's Roast Chicken recipe. I had a 4lb chicken and cooked it according to directions in a roasting pan, with the exception of using the convection feature in our oven after lowering the temperature to 350°. The chicken had pink juice flowing out of it after I had cooked it for the stated time, which I calculated to be a total of 1 hr 43 min using a traditional oven or 1 hr 25 min using convection (see photo above). I did not open the oven during that time, nor did I flip the chicken.

I had to return the chicken to the oven a few times. The final time I returned it to the oven was because the back side of the chicken was not cooked - so we flipped it even though the recipe did not call for flipping the chicken. The whole process of taking it out, testing and re-baking took an hour and a half. I was ready to give up, but it was well worth it in the end - the chicken was moist and flavorful. The onion, garlic and lemon gave the chicken so much flavor. In an effort to get to the bottom of what went wrong (lack of circulation in oven, cooking time calculation mishap or convection function) and for a chance to devour another tasty roast chicken, I'll definitely try the recipe again, and skip the convection function next time.