Easy Whole Chicken with Gravy

This is an old post I wrote but never published from 2015. Some things have changed around here, but this is still a tasty meal! Note that this "gravy" is very rich.

When I was trying to eat Paleo, I decided to make gravy out of onions to go with a whole chicken. We eat whole chickens to cut the cost (and make stock from the bones) of a higher quality chicken, but sometimes I get bored with a plain, roasted chicken. So, here is my method for gravy to go with baked chicken. I should have taken a picture of the boys begging for the crispy skin. ;)

Onions. A necessity.

Chop up two medium sweet white onions into rings and lay them into a baking dish.

They're just so pretty and round.

Add 1/2 cup of water to the bottom and the dish.

Put your chicken on top, breast side down. Season however you like. I usually drizzle is with avocado oil (since I can't use butter because of my middle guy) and then sprinkle with sea salt and thyme. Olive oil makes the skin really crispy.

Bake at 350° F for 45 minutes. Take the chicken out of the oven and flip it over. (That sounds easy, but it usually involves a big fork and spoon and lots of careful guessing as to whether the chicken will end up on the floor or back in the dish.) Bake for 45 more minutes. 90 minutes total is usually perfectly cooked for the size of chickens I buy and my oven temperature, but a food thermometer is never a bad idea if you're not sure!

After the chicken cools enough to touch it, move it to a plate. Scrape the onions and all the juices into a bowl, blender, or food processor, and blend until completely smooth. I use an immersion blender. Add sea salt to taste - usually around 1 tsp. for me - and blend again.

That's it - no thickeners, no cooking on the stove. It doesn't taste like onions; it just tastes like thick, creamy, delicious gravy.

If I have any left over, it goes into our next pot of soup! It really is so good.

This night, we ate our chicken with these potatoes. Small golden potatoes, sliced in half, tossed in avocado oil and Real Salt seasoning salt, chives, dill, paprika, and dotted with pastured lard. Baked the whole time the chicken is in the oven. Easy dinner!

Thanks for reading! Happy eating!

-- Christine