Cooked Chicken

Cooked Chicken is a food item added in the 1.8 "Adventure Update" created from roasting Raw Chicken in a furnace or by killing chickens with fire. The Cooked Chicken heals 3 units of Hunger and 7.2 units of Food Saturation, making it slightly superior to bread or Cooked Fish.

Behavior
Cooked chicken can also be obtained by killing a chicken with fire or a sword with fire enchantment on it. Eating the chicken raw only restores 1/3 as many hunger points and has a chance of giving you food poisoning.

Farming
Since chickens are persistent as of Beta 1.8, it is easily possible to create chicken egg farms. Put eggs into dispensers to spawn chickens automatically, then let the chickens fall onto a burning netherrack block and let them run off that block. They will burn to death and drop cooked chicken. This method no longer works due to the minecraft 1.0RC1 update which made baby chickens hatch from eggs instead of adults.