poifect roasted chicken
Say it with me: roasting chicken is easy. See, that wasn't so hard. It's a similar level of difficulty to actually roasting a chicken.
When you move somewhere new again and haven't made a real dinner in a real kitchen in a month
When your boyfriend announces you're giving a dinner a party (and he truly means YOU'RE, not WE'RE)
When you've driven out of state and back including a stint driving through midtown Manhattan at rush hour
When your time to begin grocery shopping for said party begins at 6 pm and the nearest grocery only has frozen whole chickens
ROASTING A CHICKEN WAS THE EASIEST PART OF THE DAY!
Now, I will bestow on you the Super Easy Roasted Chicken Recipe, which includes several critical features - first, this is a Splash Free Recipe™ (lol @ ™, we gettin fancy) which means you won't make a big ol' mess in your oven; second, this is a Juicy AF Recipe™, which means the white meat is going to be just as juicy as the dark meat; third, it is foolproof. I mean that. I don't care if you are a fool, foolish, just foolin, or fool-hardy: this recipe is for you.
Super Easy Roasted Chicken
Prep time: 30 min | Cook time: 1.5 hours
Yield: 4 servings per bird (approx)
Ingredients and Tools
5 lb whole fresh chicken (up to you whether to get organic, but don't get frozen)
1/3 cup salt
tbsp ground black pepper
tbsp ground chili pepper
bunch of rosemary
bunch of parsley
1 lemon
2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup olive oil
roasting pan and rack OR roasting pan with rigged aluminum foil slats
1 or 2 little bowls
more aluminum foil
cutting board
paring knife
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. If you don't have a rack for your roasting pan, roll a long sheet of aluminum foil into a snake and coil it in your roasting pan to create raised slats on top of which you'll put the raw chicken.
Create the dry brine. I like to do this step now along with preparing all my chicken accoutrements so I don't have to keep washing my hands as I'm dealing with raw chicken. In a bowl, mix the salt, pepper and chili powder. On the cutting board, cut the lemon in half. In another bowl, mix the honey and olive oil and squeeze one of the lemon halves a couple times. Have the parsley and rosemary springs somewhere convenient.
Remove the chicken from its package or unwrap it and remove the giblets - usually in a bag inside the cavity. Put these suckers in a ziplock bag in the freezer and save them for another recipe (chicken stock, bone broth, etc). Rinse the chicken and pat it dry with paper towels. Park the chicken in the roasting pan perched on top of the rack or the aluminum foil coil.
I use a technique where I separate the skin from the bird a little bit and get my fingers up in there, and now, so will you. It's pretty simple. Just be brave, find the opening where the skin ends at the bottom cavity, and lightly massage your fingers in there. Once you've found the space and separated the skin slightly, go ahead and start massaging the brine mixture directly into the muscle. Turn over the bird and do both sides and the inside cavity. Then use the remaining brine on the outer skin, working to restore the skin to its original placement.
Tuck the rosemary springs under the skin. Stuff the chicken with the parsley bunch. Give a lemon squirt on the chicken and stuff it inside the cavity. Massage the honey olive oil mixture onto the entire chicken.
Put the chicken in the oven and cover with a sheet of aluminum foil. Leave covered for an hour. After an hour, uncover the chicken and baste the chicken, either by spooning the juices collected in the pan all over the top of the chicken or by pouring a little more olive oil over the bird. Continue cooking for 15-30 minutes longer, checking the chicken skin as a barometer of doneness. Longer for crispier skin.
Stick a fork in it; it's done! I made two because we had hungry people. I also sent boyfriend to Whole Foods at 5:45 pm to find two unfrozen fresh chickens, and by 8:40, seven hungry guests had chicken in their mouths. Now I'm hungry again, so.......#bye
