Baked Chicken with Onions, Garlic, and Rosemary

Baked Chicken
with Onions, Garlic, and Rosemary

4 to 5 servings

Rosemary This simple but delicious dish is Greek in inspiration, so you might serve it in the Greek style with oven-roasted potatoes cooked with olive oil, garlic, and herbs.

Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Rinse and pat dry:

3-1/3 to 4-1/2 pounds chicken parts

Season liberally with:
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Toss together:
3 medium onions, cut into rings
6 to 12 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary,
or 2 teaspoons dried, crumbled

Spread half of the onion mixture in a shallow baking dish or roasting pan just large enough to hold the chicken pieces in a single layer. Arrange the chicken pieces skin side up on top, then cover with the remaining onion mixture.

Drizzle over the chicken:
2 tablespoons olive oil

Bake the chicken until the dark meat pieces exude clear juices when pricked deeply with a fork, 45 to 55 minutes.

Rosemary

From a distance, rosemary's leaves appear like diminutive pine needles on long, thin branches. The leaves are gray-green to green and sharp. No leaves are more pungent. Their fragrance and flavor might be described as pine mixed with mint. This is not an herb that can be subtle. Because the leaves are tough, chop them fairly fine. This releases even more of their flavor. The leaves dry well. To substitute dried rosemary for fresh, use a generous 1/4 teaspoon ground or 1 teaspoon crumbled dried leaves for every tablespoon of fresh rosemary finely chopped. Store fresh rosemary in the refrigerator. If necessary, you could use fresh oregano leaves, for their pungency, or sweet basil leaves and flowers in place of fresh rosemary.

Buy the Book!

Joy of Cooking
All About Chicken
By Irma S. Rombauer,
Marion Rombauer Becker & Ethan Becker
Simon & Schuster, Inc., October 2000
Hardback, 128 pages, $19.95
150 photographs; 100 in full color
ISBN: 0-7432-0204-X
Recipe reprinted by permission.