Video:How to Make Roast Chicken With Bacon and Sage

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Transcript:How to Make Roast Chicken With Bacon and Sage

Hi! This is Jesse Rosado for About.com, and today we're going to be making roasted chicken with bacon and sage.

Roast Chicken With Bacon and Sage Ingredients

So here we have our ingredients for roasted chicken with bacon and sage:

• 5-1/2 lb. chicken
• 2 strips bacon
• Macintosh apple
• Onions
• Garlic
• Celery
• Carrots
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Sage
• Butter
• Salt
• Cracked peppercorns

Prepare Chicken for Roasting

So the first thing we want to do is get our chicken prepped. We're using a 5 1/2 lb. roaster. Once we get the chicken out of the package, we're going to make sure to rinse it off with some nice cold water and take the giblets out - we don't want to bake those inside. Now that we have our chicken cleaned, we want to go ahead and get our pan ready. I'm going to put in a nice bed of mirapoix, which is essentially, carrots, onions and celery, and put a nice bed of that mirapoix down so it acts like a buffer between the bottom of our pan and bottom of our chicken.

Make Bacon and Sage Chicken Rub

Now that our pan is ready, we're going to start working on our rub for our chicken to add flavor. Our rub is going to have bacon, and we're going to use some sage, we have some thyme here, and then we also have a clove of garlic. So we're going to grab our ingredients here and throw them right into our food processor. Pop the lid on, and process. So what we're looking for here in the food processor is a nice puree - it's just that fatty bacon, with those herbs and that garlic and that cracked peppercorn. The next step is I'm going to pull back the skin of that chicken above the chicken breasts as well as above the chicken legs, and I'm going to use that bacon mixture right under the skin.

Stuff and Truss Chicken

So the next step is I'm going to rough chop some Macintosh apple, and I'm going to stuff the bird with that, and that's going to get a nice sweet flavor to contrast that bacon and chicken flavor. The last thing I'm going to do is go ahead and truss that chicken to make sure our apple stays in there. I've got a piece of string here, feels like it's longer than I need, but that's a good thing. I'm going to go ahead and lift the end of the chicken up, slide my string underneath. Pull it up so this string ends up right about the center of the chicken. And this other side, I'm going to wrap it right around this leg bone. Essentially, trussing is all about making sure the chicken limbs are nice and tight to the body so it all cooks nice and even. Come over here and get the wings, lift it up so you can get underneath, and tie it off right in the center.

Roast the Chicken

Next step is I'm just going to put in the pan right on top of that mirapoix and sprinkle salt and pepper. Alright, so now I'm going to put this in 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Then scale it back to 350, and it should go for an additional hour and twenty minutes. One critical part is just to check for doneness. You're going to want to use a thermometer here, stick it into the thickest part of the chicken breast, and the temperature we're looking for is 165.

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