This is just a crazy good roasted chicken recipe: Roasted Chicken with Bacon and Sweet Paprika
I roasted this chicken for my family on the night before Valentine’s Day, our Friday night dinner. It really couldn’t have been any easier to make. The chicken is brushed with olive oil, and then it’s rubbed with a simple mixture of orange zest, paprika, salt and pepper. After it has roasted in the oven for about 45 minutes, you sneak it out of the oven to wrap it in bacon, then it’s back into the oven until the bacon is crispy and the chicken is cooked through (another 20 minutes).
This recipe comes from a book by “FL Fowler (not her real name): Fifty Shades of Chicken. This book is a New York Times Bestseller, and it has 336 5-star reviews on Amazon. It’s a parody, of course, of the much-talked-about movie that debuted this weekend. I don’t have an interest in seeingthe movie, but I’ve been pretty impressed with this book that landed on my doorstep last week. A few things to mention: it’s a bit steamy. It’s not the sort of cookbook you want your kids picking up and reading. But it’s cleverly written steamy kitchen-style, and there are a lot of opportunities for laughing out loud. With recipes like Extra Virgin Breasts (Roasted Bone-In Breast with Olive Oil, Lemon and Rosemary, Steamy White Meat (White Wine-Steamed Chicken Breasts with Sesame Oil and Scallions), Come Hither Chicken (Roasted Chicken with Truffle Butter), and 47 morerecipes I’m embarrassed to write down… this is a book to share with your partner or good friends who “get it.” If you are easily offended by steamy romance novels, you’ll want to skip this one. That being said, the chicken recipes in this book arereally great recipes you’ll want to try. I’ll give you the non-steamy names of a few I’m drooling over: Cranberry-Baked Chicken with Apple Cider, Crispy Chicken Tenders with Cashews and Coconut Curry, Crispy Baked Chicken with Honey Mustard and Lime. They’re not your typical, ho-hum chicken recipes. And that’s a good reason to have this one on your cookbook shelf (but maybe in the back… hidden from your children!)
Roasted chicken is such an easy dinner to make. I do pick up the already-roasted chickens every once in a while from the market, but I’m always disappointed. They’re so much better when you make them yourself!
The result of this recipe: WOW. My husband and my son both said it was the best roasted chicken I’ve ever put on the dinner table. The chicken turns out super tender, and the flavor of both the orange zest and bacon come through nicely. We enjoyed the crispy pieces of bacon to scoop up with bites of chicken. I’ll definitely be trying more recipes from this book as we do like to eat chicken quite often for dinner.
One of the best roasted chicken recipes I've ever tried!
Recipe Details
Prep Time: 15 minutes mins
Cook Time: 1 hour hr 5 minutes mins
Resting Time: 10 minutes mins
Total Time: 1 hour hr 30 minutes mins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: American
Keyword: bacon, chicken, paprika, roasted chicken
Servings: 4 servings
Calories: 558kcal
Author: RecipeGirl.com (adapted slightly from Fifty Shades of Chicken)
Ingredients
- 1 medium orange
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
- 1½ teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
- 3½ to 4 pound chicken, patted dry with paper towels
- 4 ounces (4 to 6 strips) bacon
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Set a rack over a roasting pan (I used a rack placed on a foil-lined baking sheet).
Finely grate the zest of the orange into a small bowl. Add the paprika, salt and pepper, and mix to combine.
Massage the oil all over the skin of the chicken. Sprinkle some of the paprika mixture inside the bird. Rub the rest over the outside of the bird. Cut the orange into quarters and place them into the cavity of the bird.
Move the chicken to the rack. Roast for 45 minutes, basting with pan juices occasionally (if they accumulate). Remove the chicken from the oven and criss-cross the bacon over the top of the breasts. Continue to roast until the chicken is cooked through and the bacon is crisp, about 20 minutes longer. Let rest 10 minutes before carving.
Nutrition
Serving: 1serving, Calories: 558kcal, Carbohydrates: 5g, Protein: 40g, Fat: 41g, Saturated Fat: 12g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 8g, Monounsaturated Fat: 18g, Trans Fat: 0.2g, Cholesterol: 162mg, Sodium: 1194mg, Potassium: 522mg, Fiber: 2g, Sugar: 3g, Vitamin A: 1216IU, Vitamin C: 20mg, Calcium: 42mg, Iron: 2mg
More roasted chicken recipes you might enjoy:
- Chinese Roasted Chicken by Rasa Malaysia
- Slashed Chicken with Bacon- Herb Butter by RecipeGirl
- A Million Ways to Roast a Chicken by The Kitchn
- The Best Whole Chicken in a Slow Cooker by RecipeGirl
- America: Too Stupid to Cook by Michael Ruhlman
Disclosure: There are Amazon affiliate links included within this post.
