The Best Roasted Chicken Recipe

Any cook worth their salt has a foolproof, knock-your-socks-off recipe for a roasted chicken. Until yesterday, I did not have such a recipe. I've roasted chickens that turned out dry and tasteless. I've also roasted some that actually stewed in the cooking process and came out soggy and tasting like boiled meat. Which is exactly what it was.

This recipe is going to make you want to stop at the store today and get what you need to make a Garlic Roast Chicken!

I cannot take credit for the recipe. It's Ina Garten's. Here's the link for it:

Garlic Roast Chicken by Ina Garten

You'll need a five or six pound roasting chicken. You also need a lemon, two heads of garlic, half of a big Spanish onion, four carrots, two Yukon Gold potatoes and four tablespoons of butter. I deviated a little from these ingredients, though.

When you get the chicken home from the store, unwrap that bad boy, rinse it off, and salt him down with kosher salt. Inside and out. Then wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a day (up to two days, even!)

 

This is my bird after it refrigerated overnight. Notice all the liquid that came out of it.  I think the salt drew it out. A lot of the roasting chickens in store have been injected with a bunch of salt water (I think the manufacturer refers to it as "broth"). Supposedly it's to make it juicer. Don't insult my intelligence....it's to bump up the weight of the bird. We're paying for as much as 10% of the weight in salt water!

 

 

I dumped all that liquid out and rinsed the bird again.

 

Here's the rest of the ingredients:

 

 

I used baby yellow potatoes, a yellow onion and only two carrots. It's a matter of personal preference and what I had on hand.

 

Cut the lemon and garlic heads in half. Just leave the papery skin on the garlic.

 

 

 

 

Salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Use kosher salt and fresh ground pepper if you have it. If not, table salt  and regular ground pepper will do.  Then stuff the lemon and all the garlic into the chicken.

 



 

Cut up the onion, carrots and potatoes and toss them in the pan around the chicken. I prefer the baby potatoes for roasting. I think they are visually appealing and they are so tender, too. But like I said, it's a matter of personal choice.

 

 

Melt the four tablespoons of butter then brush it all over the skin of the chicken. Once I got in there with the butter, I thought that four tablespoons was a little too much. I used about half that amount.

 

 

 

Salt and pepper the outside of the bird and the veggies in the pan, then pop it into a 400 degree oven for an hour and a half (or so). 

 

 

See that little plastic pop-up thingie in the chicken breast? I left it in there on purpose, even though I'm not relying on it to tell me when my bird is done.  Per this recipe, I'll test for doneness by sticking a knife in between the leg and thigh. When the juices run clear, the bird is done. I want to see if that pop-up timer is popped up when the juices run clear. It's a test!

 

 

Those little plastic pop-up timers are nothing more than a tiny spring compressed in a tube with a blob of soft metal. That blob of metal is designed to melt at 185 degrees, which is supposed to be the temperature of the bird when it's done. When the metal melts, it releases the spring which pops up inside the tube and lifts the plastic top. An ingenious and cheap thermometer!

 

Any-who, I was curious about how accurate that thermometer would be for indicating a cooked bird.  Turns out, it's not.  After an hour and a half in the oven, the juices ran clear when I pierced the bird at the thick part of the leg and thigh. But the pop up timer wasn't popped up.

 

 

 The chicken was golden brown and cooked all the way through. Oh and it smelled like heaven!  When G.W. got home from work he said he could smell it all the way out in the driveway and knew something good was happening in the kitchen.

 

This is hands-down the best roasted chicken we've ever had. There was a garlic flavor to it, but not overwhelming. It didn't need any additional salt or pepper at the table. The vegetables were tender and carmelized in spots. Yum! You have to make this recipe!

 

Oh, back to that pop-up timer.  I suspect it might be the reason why I've made some dried-out roasted chickens before.  I don't know how much longer it would have taken in the oven before it popped up, but I'm guessing about long enough to dry out my chicken!

 

From now on, I'm pulling that timer out and trusting the "juices run clear" method!

 

After dinner, I pulled the rest of the meat off the chicken bones to save for another meal. I also saved the carcass to make broth. I'll show that to you in the next kitchen post!

 

Now go out and buy what you need to make this recipe!