My friend, Terri, suggested I should do a post on roast chicken. Easier said than done! On the one hand, it’s pretty straightforward to roast a chicken; on the other hand, it can be a challenge to get it right, and it can feel daunting. Although you can find super simple recipes, there are many cookbook authors and chefs who will pontificate about elaborate techniques for a perfect roast chicken.

Here’s my confession – we almost never roast a whole chicken anymore. We are lucky to have Mazzeo’s Meat and Seafood within Guido’s Fresh Marketplace, our specialty food store; and the butchers will break down whole chickens for you. So most of the time when we want a roast chicken, we ask them to spatchcock one of the air-chilled whole chickens they sell.

On the plus side, the cooking time is significantly shorter for a spatchcock chicken, and it’s easier to break down into quarters for serving. (I promise I’ll do a post on that another time!) However, if you like to slice the breast meat, it’s easier to roast a whole chicken.

Another factor I have to mention relates to the air-chilled chicken. We almost always buy one of these, and if we need it broken down into quarters or even eight pieces, the butchers will do that for us as well. (The only time we buy pieces are when it’s a very specific requirement for a recipe, e.g., boneless, skinless chicken thighs for a stir-fry.) These are smaller than the roasters sold in supermarkets, usually only about 3½ pounds, but they taste so much better. One of the butchers explained that most chickens are chilled in cold water, which means the meat absorbs some water and that affects the taste, which is why the air-chilled taste better.

The upshot is if you want to make a super simple roast chicken, place a whole chicken in a roasting pan or glass baking dish, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and follow the cooking directions below. If you can get a spatchcock chicken, the same applies but the cooking time is usually around 45 minutes. You can also roast chicken pieces, and I’ve already posted a recipe with those instructions that includes some lemon and za’atar.

And then there are gimmicks like beer-can chicken or vertical roasting racks. I once even tried cooking a whole chicken by impaling it on the center of a Bundt pan (with a piece of foil covering the hole) and potatoes in the Bundt pan itself. (See photo.) It was good, but, in my view, not worth the effort.

You could also consider whether you’d like to roast potatoes and/or other vegetables in the same pan, or place the chicken atop slices of good bread to make decadent croutons, but for this post, I present you with what I did most recently when we roasted a whole chicken.

Roast Chicken

Serves 4

1 whole chicken, about 3½ pounds
½ onion (cut through the stem end)
¼ lemon
2 cloves garlic, smashed, but left whole
2 Tablespoons butter, room temperature
3 Tablespoons rosemary, chopped, divided
½ teaspoon plus a pinch kosher salt, divided
¼-½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper, divided
1½ Tablespoon olive oil

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Place the ½ onion, ¼ lemon, and garlic in the cavity of the chicken. Sprinkle about ¼ teaspoon salt and a generous pinch of pepper into the cavity. and put the chicken breast side up on a roasting pan or glass baking dish. (Note that if you use a glass baking dish, you can’t make the gravy recipe linked here.)

Combine the butter with the half the rosemary, a pinch of salt, and a generous pinch of pepper. Slide your fingers between the skin and the breast meat to make a bit of a pocket. If you can reach into the thigh area a bit, do so, but don’t tear the skin. Scoop about half of the butter mixture onto your fingers and work it in between the skin and the meat on one side of the chicken. Repeat on the other side.

Drizzle the olive oil over the chicken and sprinkle with the remaining rosemary, salt, and pepper.

Place the chicken in the oven and roast at 425°F for 30 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 350°F and continue to roast for about 20 minutes per pound total (including the 30 minutes at the beginning), or until the internal temperature reaches 165°F on an instant read thermometer. This should be about an hour and 10-20 minutes for a 3½ pound chicken.

Remove from the oven and allow to sit for a few minutes before carving. If you used a metal pan and are making gravy, remove the chicken to a cutting board and follow the recipe here (at the end of this post about Thanksgiving) to use the pan drippings to make a cider gravy.

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The Paradox of a Simple Roast Chicken