The Right Way to Roast a Chicken

Ah, roasted chicken- the pinnacle of home cooking.  There’s nothing quite like biting in to the potato-chip-like crackle of perfectly golden brown skin only to discover savory, drippy, tender meat underneath.

And yet, few home cooks venture to attempt creating this joy in their own home.  Maybe it has something to do with the misguided notion that a little poultry skin or some dark meat will do irreparable damage to one’s health.  Maybe it’s because raw chicken can smell weird and be covered in red juice (which isn’t blood, by the way, it’s myoglobin, which is the red pigment found in muscle tissue).  But I think it’s because when you Google “best roast chicken,” you get 114,000,000 results in 0.64 seconds.  If that’s not overwhelming, I don’t know what is.

Now, I roast a chicken approximately once a week à la Ina Garten.  I used to follow recipes from America’s Test Kitchen or Alton Brown obsessively, worrying that one wrong move would spoil the whole endeavor.  But I got tired of looking at recipes over and over, as I am wont to do, so I explored what other cooks do with their roast chicken.  I realized that every single “definitive” recipe said something totally different.

I tried a bunch of them and realized something: we’re making this way too complicated.  Just about every technique I followed was absolutely delicious, and despite all the variation in recipes and end results, the best qualities come from 3 basic tenets:

1. Super high heat at some point, to crisp the skin.
2. Using a meat thermometer.
3. Heavy-handed salt* use.

*I always use coarse Kosher or sea salt in cooking- it gives you far more control and less funky flavors than iodized table salt.  I’ll do a whole blog post on salt at some point!

You can go the ultimate simple route and plop a chicken, whole in a pan or Dutch oven in a super hot oven.  

You could “spatchcock” or butterfly the chicken by cutting out the backbone with strong shears and laying it flat on a pan or cookie sheet, making it quicker-cooking and easier to carve.  

You could go a step further and elevate the spatchcocked chicken above root vegetables, or even cubes of bread.

You could also remove the breastbone to create two halves of chicken that are easier to maneuver in a pan.

You could completely butcher the raw chicken into four, six, eight, or even ten parts.  I know it sounds scary and messy (Clorox is your friend), but please try it, especially on a cheaper chicken- it’s very empowering and is a good way to relieve stress at the end of a hard day.  Sear skin-side down, and then roast the rest of the way in a low oven.  The more parts the chicken is cut in to, the faster it cooks.

It may help to oil the skin or prick little holes in it to release the fat.  It may help to add baking powder to the skin to help with crispness and color.  It may help to salt the meat (under the skin) ahead of time to let it dry-brine.  You could tie the wings and legs together for more even-tempered heating.  You could preheat the pan to sear the bottom.  You could add pepper or other spices if you want.  You could baste with chicken juices or marinades during the cooking process.  You could make a salsa verde or pan sauce while the chicken rests.  You can use the time while the chicken is roasting to make side dishes or clean your house or just relax.  But you don’t have to do any of this to get the best meal you’ve ever made.

Depending on how many people you’re feeding, roast-chicken leftovers are a gift that just keeps giving.  Shred the chicken off the bone as soon as the meal is over while subtly helping yourself to the rest of the crispy skin, and dinner is decided for a second night!  It’s great in sandwiches or on crostini with a spread, seared with some spices for tacos, scattered on a pizza, mixed into salad greens, or dumped in a soup.

The point is, there’s no wrong way to do this.  As long as you use lots of salt on and under the skin, use a high-temp oven at least until the skin gets brown and bubbly, and pull the meat as it reaches 155F, you’re golden (brown and delicious). This same technique works well for larger birds, like turkeys, or smaller birds, like Cornish hens, with longer or shorter cooking times, respectively.

Pick and choose what you’re comfortable with and practice your own variation often- whole chickens are typically dirt-cheap at the supermarket.  The lingering smell of roast chicken in your house and the happy faces on your family are reward enough, but I’d like to challenge you to go one step further: 

Once you feel pretty comfortable with your chosen technique, reward yourself with a chicken from an actual farm.  Go shake the hand of the guy (or girl, or, in Stowe VT, the 79-year-old woman) who knew the chicken before it became your dinner.  It’s pricey, yes.  But the truer, more “chickeny” flavor, the not-at-all-overgrown-spongy-supermarket-chicken texture, and the connection to where your food came from is like nothing else.  And I’d bet you’ll do it again and again, just like I do.