A whole baked chicken is not hard to prepare.  Some are afraid to tackle it, but I assure even the most timid among us, baking a chicken is more of a challenge for the oven than it is for us klutzes.

Battle Plan:

Yup, first you have to get a chicken.  If you feel drawn toward those nice, plump roasting chickens you see in the supermarket, more power to you! They do make a fine and tasty meal.

If, however, your budget steers you instead toward those smaller, scrawnier whole frying chickens with a cheaper price tag, don’t despair. They make a nice little meal, too. 

Generally, you can judge accordingly when it comes to amount of chicken:

• 1-2 people, one frying chicken
• 2-4 people, two frying chickens
• 4-6 people, three frying chickens
• One plump roasting chicken (say, 4 lb. size) would adequately feed up to five people.

I generally like to buy a whole chicken fresh and cook it within 24 hours, but you can buy whole chickens frozen – or freeze them – once you get them home from the store.

If you are thawing a frozen chicken, don’t let it sit out on the counter all day. Thaw in the refrigerator or quick thaw in a bowl of cold water. You can also use the “defrost” feature on your microwave oven.

Remove the plastic wrap from the chicken and rinse it well under cold running water in the sink. If it’s a big chicken, put it in a strainer (colander) if you are worried about fumbling it in a not-emaculate-kitchen sink.

While you’ve got it under the faucet, reach inside and dig out of the crevices that gunky junk that, I’m told, is clotted blood. Eww, huh! Whatever it is, scrape it out and rinse the inside of the chicken thoroughly.

Always with cold water, klutzes…you want to keep that flesh at a nice safe temperature prior to cooking.

Now, pat the bird dry with paper towels or skip this part if you just want to get the thing into the pan. I have cooked countless chickens over the years that were both dried first and left wet.  I’ve yet to have anyone shriek at me over the dinner table, “Oh my God, you baked this chicken without drying it off, didn’t you!”

Trust me, it won’t happen.

(Make sure you wash your hands thoroughly after handling raw chicken.)

The attack:

Now, place your chicken back side down in a roasting pan or baking pan/glass dish (any of the three is acceptable). If you are working with more than one chicken, they can sit side by side in your pan. Don’t pile them on top of each other; they won’t cook evenly.

If you want to, you can stick cooking pins into the wings and legs to keep these pieces in place tight against the chicken body. Myself, I generally don’t, just because I’m not only a klutzy cook but also a bit of a lazy one, too!

With your chicken in the pan, you can get a little creative as far as seasonings go. Brushing the skin with salad dressing, olive oil or melted butter adds good flavor.  Once you’ve coated the chicken well, use various seasonings to your heart’s content.

Ones I’ve found especially tasty to sprinkle on the chicken:

• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• Italian seasoning
• Lemon Pepper
• Basil
• Oregano
• Chili powder
• Seasoned Salt
• Ramen noodle dry soup packets

Once you’ve seasoned the bird, you can add a final touch to your creation by slicing up some onions and slicing a few pieces of garlic to stick inside the body cavity. You won’t be serving these, they are simply meant to add flavor to the chicken flesh during roasting. One or two bay leaves may also be slipped inside the chicken.

Add a little fluid to the pan, a cup of water or chicken broth poured into the bottom of the pan and voila! – that’s all there is to it!

Full assault:

You now have a chicken ready to pop in the oven. I strongly recommend that you purchase a meat thermometer and use it whenever you are cooking meat or fowl. It’s just too hard to judge when something like a chicken is actually done, even though – yes – there are all sorts of little tips and tricks to the contrary:

Wiggle the leg until it moves freely…see if the juices between the leg and the breast run clear…throw the chicken into the air three times and if it doesn’t fall apart when it lands on the floor, it isn’t done yet.

(Just kidding on the last one….hehe.)

Stick the meat thermometer into the thickest part of your chicken (don’t push all the way through, you won’t get an accurate temperature reading), cover the pan (aluminum foil with the shiny side down works well, seal the foil around the edges of the pan with your fingers) and put the chicken into a pre-heated 350-degree oven.

Later, when you get good at baking a simple chicken, we’ll get fancy and add stuffing and cute little tricks like jacking the starting temperature to 450-degrees for the first half hour, then lowering the temp to 350-degrees for the duration.

For now, let’s just concentrate on roasting that chicken the simple way.

As your chicken cooks, don’t be tempted to keep opening the oven door to see how it’s doing. Every time you open the oven door, the oven loses at least 50-degrees.  It’s important to keep the oven temperature as constant as possible.

Checking the chicken, say, every half hour (more often as it gets closer to being done), you should have a nice tasy bird – depending on its size – in about 1 1/2 hours.

When it’s done, remove the pan from the oven and allow the chicken to sit undisturbed for at least 15 minutes. This gives the juices in the chicken time to settle down and really permeate the meat. Of course, if you are in a great big hurry, don’t wait. Go ahead and dive right in!

Congratulation, Klutzes!  You have just kept yourself from starving to death by cooking the easiest thing in the world….a chicken!