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.
Oven-Ready roast chicken after baking.
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 cooked chicken in 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.
Homemade chicken gravy – success!
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.
