Roasted Chicken

I made this for dinner (or supper, for the southerners out there)  today, and I thought I'd better document it before I forgot the recipe.

1 whole chicken (4-5 lbs)
1 bundle of celery
4 carrots
1 onion
7 cloves of garlic
1 lemon
lemon juice (fresh or bottled)
Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning
salt
pepper
garlic powder

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

I don't have a roasting pan, so I used a 9 x 13 pan.   Place 4 or 5 whole celery stalks in the pan.  Cut three of the carrots in large pieces and place in between the celery stalks.  Cut 1/2 of the onion into large pieces, and scatter that on top of the celery and carrots.  Place chicken on top of vegetables.  Pour enough lemon juice into the pan to cover the vegetables.  Cut lemon into 8 pieces.  Squeeze a little lemon juice on the chicken.

Slice the remaining carrot.  Chop the rest of the onion.  Place this inside the chicken along with 3 cloves of garlic.  Loosen the skin on the chicken, and place the other 4 cloves of garlic in various areas under the skin.  Sprinkle a generous amount of Tony's, pepper, garlic powder and salt on the outside of the chicken.

Do not cover.  Place in the oven for 90 minutes.  Remove, cover with foil and let the chicken rest for 10 minutes before trying to serve it.  This came out really well.  It was far more tender than my previous attempts at roasted chicken.

I made cranberry sauce to serve with this.  Yummy!  I would have used some fresh rosemary in this, but we were out.   It took me about 30 minutes to get the chicken prepped and into the oven.