Roasted chicken with potatoes

Preheat oven to 425.

Remove chicken from refrigerator. Take off packaging and remove giblets/neck. Put them in a bag and freeze to use in making stock at a later date. Put chicken in a large rectangle baking dish, 9x13 works, but use a slightly larger one if you have it.  Let come up to room temp for about 30 minutes.

While the chicken is resting prep the rest of the ingredients except the potatoes. Melt butter in the microwave or on the stove, let cool a bit. Add salt, pepper and paprika to butter and press two cloves of garlic into the butter. Set aside. 

Cut celery into several pieces. Chop onion into rough pieces, about an inch or so and chop remaining garlic. Stuff into cavity of chicken.

Run your fingers or a spoon between the breast meat and skin, loosening so you have a pocket between each breast and the skin. Slip several spoonful's of the butter mixture under the skin in the pocket you just created and rub in. Put several more spoonfuls in the cavity with the vegetables, until most of the butter is used up. Rub remaining mixture over the outside of the bird. Sprinkle with a dash more of salt and pepper.

Put chicken in pan all the way at the top of the pan and place in oven and roast for 30 minutes.

While chicken roasts, wash and prep potatoes. After 30 minutes is up take chicken out of the oven and add potatoes to one end and toss well with the juices in the pan. Be VERY careful, everything is really hot. Put chicken and potatoes back into the oven for 30 more minutes.

At the end of the second 30 minutes remove from oven, toss potatoes again in pan juices and roast for another 20 minutes. Remove from oven and use an instant read thermometer and check the temp in the thickest part of the breast, it needs to reach about 165 F. Let rest. Temp should come up another five degrees during the resting period.

The roasting technique here is hot and fast. Between the heat searing the outside of the bird and the butter under the skin, the chicken stays moist, even if you over cook it a bit (I've even hit about 177 and still had lovely, moist meat, but try not to get it this hot). And the skin... crispy, salty perfection. I usually eat it all while it's resting (don't tell my husband!). The potatoes cook in the juices from the bird and vegetables, as well as the butter. Just be careful when you're tossing the potatoes. Everything is very hot. The legs should easily separate from the chicken and slice breast meat. You can serve on a large platter, but we just cut the chicken up while in the pan and place on individual plates. Why dirty up a platter? Spoon potatoes next to the chicken and drizzle with pan juices.