Roast Chicken with Lemon and Thyme
A whole chicken salted and left uncovered in the fridge before roasting hot then moderate, so the skin crisps and the breast stays juicy.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 1 hr 20 min
- Total
- 1 hr 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 3
Allergens
- Milk
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Method
Take the chicken out of its wrapping and pat it dry inside and out with kitchen paper.
Rub the 8g of fine salt over the whole bird, cavity included.
Set it uncovered on a plate in the fridge for at least 4 hours, and overnight if you can. Dry skin is the entire difference between crisp and leathery — skin still damp from the packet spends the first half of the roast steaming itself, and by the time it has dried out the breast is already overcooked.
Take the chicken out of the fridge an hour before it goes in the oven, so it is not fridge-cold at the centre.
Heat the oven to 220C/425F.
Push the lemon halves, the garlic cloves and 6 of the thyme sprigs into the cavity.
Strip the leaves from the remaining 4 sprigs.
Mash the thyme leaves and the ground pepper into the softened butter.
Rub the butter thinly over the breast and legs.
Tie the legs together with string so the bird holds a compact shape and the breast is less exposed.
Set the chicken breast-side up in a roasting tin, on a rack if you have one.
Roast at 220C/425F for 20 minutes, until the skin has tightened and taken the first colour.
Turn the oven down to 190C/375F.
Roast for a further 50-60 minutes, basting once with the tin juices halfway through.
Push a skewer into the thickest part of the thigh, where the leg meets the body, and watch what runs out — clear juice means it is done, any pink means another 10 minutes.
Check the same spot with a thermometer if you have one, keeping the tip off the bone: 74C/165F.
Lift the chicken onto a warm board.
Rest it for 20 minutes, loosely tented with foil. This is not optional. In a bird carved straight from the oven the juices are still driven out towards the surface, and they run onto the board the second the knife goes in, which empties the meat and leaves it dry.
Tip any juice from the cavity back into the tin and stir it through the pan juices while the bird rests.
Carve the legs off first, then the breasts.
Scatter the carved meat with flaky salt.
Spoon the pan juices over.
Keep the stripped carcass in the freezer for stock. It is worth more than anything sold in a carton, and the chicken stock elsewhere in this collection is built around it.