It’s funny how when the entire family gets sick, your standards suddenly plummet. Showers and baths are way too labor intensive to manage, and cooking? Forget it.
But as soon as I start feeling better, I get this overwhelming need to cook for my family again. But instead of our usual semi-vegetarian, mostly organic, clean eating diet, I want something easy — but with a big payoff. Roasted chicken with smashed potatoes and broccoli was just the ticket — comfort food without the discomfort of standing around cooking all darn day.
This wasn’t just any roasted chicken. As a BzzAgent, I get to sample new products in exchange for spreading the word about them — good or bad. This time around, I had a chance to try out Perdue’s Oven-Ready Roast Chicken, described as “Deliciously seasoned and ready to cook perfectly in a convenient cook-in bag, every PERDUE® OVEN READY Roast is designed for no prep, no mess and easy clean-up.”
It was pretty darn easy — the chicken is already seasoned and ready to pop into the oven (just cut a small slit in the inner plastic bag to keep it from exploding) and, about two hours later, it was done.
Unfortunately, the sides of the chicken were a little too close to the bag, so the wings ended up stuck to the inside of the bag.
The people at Purdue must know that, if you’re baking a chicken in a bag, you probably don’t make homemade gravy very often. And it’s true, I don’t (just ask my husband). The instructions on the side of the bag to make gravy were surprisingly easy to follow and made a deliciously seasoned gravy to go with the chicken.
Although I’m not a big fan of cooking meat in a bag, this chicken turned out tender and moist (even the white meat was moist), and the six-pound bird provided more than enough food for our family of four. Tomorrow night I’ll be making leftovers and then chicken stock with the bones.