A roast chicken is one of the most useful things you can learn to cook. This one keeps the flavours simple: lemon, garlic, herbs and olive oil. The lemon and garlic roast in the tin alongside the bird and become the base of a quick sauce at the end.
Serves 4, with leftovers if you are lucky.
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, about 1.5 kg
- 2 lemons
- 1 whole head of garlic
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- A few sprigs of thyme or rosemary
- 1 tsp flaky sea salt, plus more to taste
- Black pepper
- 150 ml water or chicken stock, for the juices
A note before you start: do not rinse the chicken
Older recipes often say to wash a chicken under the tap. Food safety advice in the UK is not to. Rinsing raw chicken does not remove bacteria. It splashes them onto the sink, the taps and anything nearby. Proper cooking is what makes the chicken safe.
If the skin is damp, pat it dry with kitchen paper and throw the paper straight in the bin. Wash your hands, and anything the raw chicken touched, with hot soapy water.
Method
- Prepare. Take the chicken out of the fridge about 30 minutes before cooking. Heat the oven to 200°C conventional or 180°C fan.
- Dry the skin. Remove any packaging and string. Pat the skin dry with kitchen paper. Dry skin browns and crisps. Wet skin steams.
- Lemons and garlic. Cut one lemon in half and set it aside. Finely grate the zest of the second lemon, then cut that lemon in half too. Slice the head of garlic in half across the middle, through all the cloves.
- Season. Mix the lemon zest with the olive oil, salt and a good grind of pepper. Sit the chicken in a roasting tin and rub the mixture all over the skin, including the legs and underneath.
- Stuff. Push two lemon halves and a few herb sprigs into the cavity. Put the other two lemon halves, cut side down, and both halves of the garlic into the tin around the chicken.
- Roast. Roast for about 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes for a 1.5 kg bird. As a rough guide, allow 20 minutes per 500 g plus 20 minutes. Baste once or twice with the juices in the tin.
- Check it is cooked. Push a skewer into the thickest part of the thigh, near the bone. The juices should run clear, with no pink. The meat should show no pink either, and the leg should feel loose when you wiggle it. If you have a meat thermometer, the thickest part should read 75°C. If it is not there yet, give it another 10 minutes and check again.
- Rest. Lift the chicken onto a board, cover it loosely with foil and leave it for 15 minutes. The juices settle back into the meat and carving is easier.
Pan juices
While the chicken rests, make a simple sauce in the roasting tin.
- Squeeze the soft garlic cloves out of their skins into the tin and mash them with a fork.
- Squeeze in the juice from the roasted lemon halves. Hold them with tongs, they are hot.
- Set the tin over a medium heat, add the water or stock and scrape up all the browned bits from the bottom. Let it bubble for 2 to 3 minutes.
- Taste and add salt if it needs it. Pour in any juices from the resting chicken.
Spoon the juices over the carved chicken just before serving.
A few useful extras
- Potatoes in the same tin. Cut 800 g of potatoes into chunks, toss them in 2 tbsp of olive oil and salt, and put them around the chicken at the start. Turn them once halfway.
- Crisper skin. Salt the chicken the night before and leave it uncovered on a plate at the bottom of the fridge, away from other food.
- Leftovers. Cool them quickly, cover, and keep them in the fridge. Use them within 2 days.
Finishing with oil
Just before serving, a small drizzle of fresh extra virgin olive oil over the sliced meat adds a final bit of flavour that roasting cannot. Ours comes from Dukat, in Vlorë county, Albania, in 0.5 L dark glass bottles with the harvest date on each one. You can find it here if your Sunday roast needs a new bottle.