Apple Bacon Roast Chicken

It’s finally cool enough that firing up the oven actually sounds appealing…especially if, after a while, a tasty roast chicken just happens to come out of said oven. I also had a couple of roaster chickens knocking around in my fridge so I set out to find an interesting roast chicken recipe. Among several intriguing choices, this one caught my eye because not only did I have all the ingredients at home already but one of the ingredients was bacon. Bacon that you covered the whole bird in. This I had to try.

My husband isn’t one for the sweet and meat pairing so I used the Recipezaar recipe more as inspiration than as tried and true directions. However, I bet maple syrup glazed, bacon coated, apple cooked chicken would be absolutely fantastic. One of these days when my husband is out of town I just may make Maple Bacon Chicken as written but for now, here’s my inspired but different Apple Bacon Roast Chicken.

Ingredients
1 roaster chicken (4lbs-ish)
1 apple
1 lb bacon
2 potatoes
1 handful of baby carrots or 2 sliced regular sized carrots
2 onions
black pepper
Cayenne pepper
salt
1T oil

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Lightly grease the bottom of a chicken roaster with oil just to keep the veggies from sticking. Slice the potatoes and onions into the bottom of the pan. Add the baby carrots/big carrots.

Wash the chicken and remove the giblets plus any excess fat. Salt and pepper the top, bottom and cavity of the chicken. Peel and quarter an apple and put it in the cavity. Place the chicken in the roaster, breast side up. Cover the top with the bacon. Cover the roasting pan and cook for 1.25 to 2 hours, depending on the size of the bird.

Production Notes
First of all this was one delicious bird, although I wish the apple and bacon flavor had come out more strongly in the meat. I expect that the maple syrup glaze might help somewhat to flavor the chicken with bacon and apple. The veggies, on the other hand, tasted of apples, bacon and awesome even if they were a bit greasy. Quite a bit greasy actually but it was totally worth it. Yum.

We were a little perplexed as to what to do with the bacon once the bird came out of the oven. It looks pretty but is a little impractical once you get down to carving. We wound up pulling the bacon off and piling it on one side and then serving a couple strips with a cut of meat and some veggies. Ultimately, cutting the bacon up with pieces of chicken worked the best and I’ll bet that changing up strips of bacon for chopped bits would solve the bacon conundrum. A sort of bacon encrusted roasted chicken if you will.