Alton Brown's "40 Cloves and a Chicken" Recipe

I've had this recipe in my "to try" queue for a while now, and decided to give it a go on a cheery, beautiful Sunday afternoon.  I had originally planned to just roast the chicken, but then thought, 'Hey. Why not, jack?'  Duck Dynasty is a great show.

The recipe requires olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, and garlic.  It requires the chicken to be cut into 8 pieces.  I should mention here that I've never cut up a chicken before.  A rabbit, yes.  A chicken, no--I just roast them whole, or buy pre-cut chicken from the store.  The rabbit was part of a program at the McKinnis house, and wasn't that hard to cut--it had already been skinned, so it just needed to be cut into pieces.  Chickens, on the other hand, still have the skin on, and that just makes everything more slippery and, well, icky.  But after much weeping and gnashing of teeth on the chicken's part, I won, and the chicken became eight pieces. 

This is really an easy recipe.  The hard part was peeling forty cloves of garlic, but thanks to a trusty garlic peeler tube thingy that my mother-in-law gave me a long time ago, even that went pretty quickly.  I love the smell of fresh garlic!  And I fear no vampires now (not that I ever have).

You basically cut up a whole chicken into 8 pieces.  I removed the skin on all of the pieces except the wings, since neither my husband nor I like chicken skin, but chicken wings are hard to remove the skin from.

Then, you peel 40 cloves of garlic and set them aside.

Salt and pepper the chicken pieces.  Brown the chicken in two tablespoons of olive oil, and then move the pieces to an oven-safe baking dish.  Everything I have is too small for holding a whole cut-up chicken.  Guess I'll have to go shopping soon.

Pour a half of a cup of olive oil into the baking dish, then add 10 sprigs of fresh rosemary (which I didn't have, so I just sprinkled some of my dry rosemary over the chicken), and add the garlic cloves.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours, until the chicken is cooked through but still tender.  Goes great with mashed potatoes and fresh green beans.  Everything about this recipe is just so easy!

For the actual recipe, here is the Alton Brown's Food Network page: 40 Cloves and a Chicken.