Oven Baked Chicken

I love fried chicken but never, ever make it at home.  Honestly, I haven't even made this relatively simple Oven Baked Chicken at home very often over the years.  However, Jackson especially seems to like this recipe so I will need to pull it out more often.

Oven Baked Chicken

chicken pieces (I bought a pkg. of chicken thighs and a pkg. of chicken quarters)

flour

garlic powder

onion powder

paprika

salt

pepper

I think I threw in a little Montreal Chicken seasoning as well

This is another one of those recipes that is just a 'go with how it looks' process.  I would guess that I used about 2 cups of flour and about 1 tsp. of each of the seasonings, but I really have no idea.  Just toss it all together until it looks like the proportions match up.  I put the seasoned flour in a paper bag and then shake several pieces of chicken at a time to coat them.  Grease a couple of baking sheets and lay the coated pieces of chicken, skin side up, on the baking sheets; making sure not to crowd them too much.  You want air to circulate all around each piece of chicken.  (I combined both sheets of chicken onto one sheet for the photo below.)

Bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees.  Lower the heat to 350 degrees and cook for 15-30 minutes longer (about 15 minutes per pound total cooking time) or until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165 for breasts and 170 for thighs.  If you want to brown them a bit more, turn the oven to broil for the last few minutes.  (but pay attention… you can see I broiled a couple pieces a bit too long!)  

I did use the drippings to make gravy.  I removed the chicken to a platter then scraped all the 'cooked on drippings' off of the baking pan.  (I left most of the grease behind)  I added the drippings to a pan with 2 ½ cups water, 4 chicken bouillon cubes, some garlic and pepper.  After bringing that mixture to a slow boil, I stirred about 1 Tbsp. of corn starch into ½ cup water and added to the gravy.  Stir until slightly thickened, then serve.  

We served the chicken alongside rice, with gravy over the rice.  This would go well with mashed potatoes, too.