Coffee-Rubbed Roasted Chicken

When Whole Foods put organic chickens on sale during one of their Friday One Day Deals, I knew I wanted to ge ta couple.  I put one in the freezer and one in the fridge to make this chicken and finally got a chance.  Most raw chickens have a little bag of giblets in the cavity and sometimes a neck.  You are supposed to remove these and rinse the inside and outside of the chicken.  If you ask your husband if there is a bag of parts inside and he says no - he's wrong - there is.  You will find it after you/he carves the bird.  I don't really know the purpose of these being included - I know people use them for things (gravy?) but it's just a little gross to me. 

Coffee-Rubbed Roasted Chicken

Serves 4 to 6
3 tablespoons finely ground coffee beans
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (3- to 4-pound) whole chicken

Preheat oven to 375°F. In a small bowl, stir together coffee, butter, sugar, garlic, pepper and salt. Rinse the inside and outside of the chicken and remove the bag of giblets and/or neck from the cavity (um…it’s easy to forget..). Pat the outside dry-ish with a paper towel. Arrange chicken, breast side up, in a shallow roasting pan and spread rub all over to coat completely. You may have trouble getting it to “spread”, so you might have to kind of pat it on. Just get it to stick as best you can. You can cover and refrigerate up to two days if you want, but you don’t need to.

Roast chicken, basting every 20 minutes or so with pan juices, until skin is deep golden brown and crisp and meat is cooked through, about 1 hour. Set aside to rest 10 minutes before carving.
The coffee rub stuck to the skin during cooking and was SO good – and I usually won’t eat the skin! The meat was tender – use a thermometer if you are worried of over-cooking. The temp always raises about 5-10 degrees after its removed from the oven, so you can take it out a little early. I served this with Roasted Potatoes with Bacon & Cheese, Crockpot Quinoa, and Steamed Broccolini.