Roast chicken is a delicious main course that can be prepared for an informal dinner with friends, but for many, it is also one of the great Christmas classics. After all, it is one of the few recipes that always manages to please everyone, don’t you think? The roast chicken must be cooked whole and with the skin on, so that it releases its fat and helps to keep the meat tender and succulent. Therefore, it is important to control the cooking times because the biggest risk is that the chicken becomes too dry. In addition, before baking, the chicken should be covered on the outside and inside with a mixture of salt and aromatic herbs. Roast chicken is a simple preparation: its aroma will spread throughout the kitchen and everyone will love it! If you have any leftovers, you can also use them to make a fabulous chicken sandwich for the next day… it can’t get any better than that!
Discover other chicken-based recipes:
Roast Chicken Recipe
Ingredients:
1 kg Whole Chicken
10 g Coarse Salt
2 Cloves Garlic
5 Sage Leaves
2 Bay Leaves
2 Sprigs Rosemary
1 Sprig Oregano
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Preparation:
1. To prepare the roast chicken, first tie the chicken so that it maintains its shape after cooking. Take a cooking elastic and wrap it around the end of the thighs, stretch it and bring it around behind the breast to keep it in place.
2. Put the coarse salt, bay leaf, sage, rosemary, fresh oregano and peeled garlic cloves in a mixer.
3. Blend everything together and transfer the mixture to a small bowl.
4. Take the chicken and place it in a baking dish.
5. Brush or massage the surface of the chicken from both sides with extra virgin olive oil.
6. Cover the entire chicken with the aromatic mixture, rubbing it well on all sides to make it adhere well. Also, season the inside of the chicken with the aromatic mixture.
7. Bake the chicken in a preheated static oven at 180° for about one hour.
8. Occasionally, baste the chicken with its cooking juices.
9. Halfway through the cooking time, remove the chicken from the oven and turn it over so that it cooks evenly on both sides.
10. Continue cooking, basting the chicken with its juices from time to time.
11. Once cooked, remove from the oven and serve your chicken. To make sure it is well cooked, you can measure the temperature in the center of the thigh – it should be 72°.
Storage:
You can store the roast chicken in the refrigerator, in a container, for one day.
Tip:
If using a larger chicken, increase the amount of salt and aromatic herbs. For each kilogram of chicken, you will need 10 g of salt. Cooking times will also change, consider that for each kilogram of chicken, cooking time is one hour. Therefore, for a chicken weighing one and a half kilograms, for example, you will need 15 g of salt and an hour and a half of cooking time. If you want to serve the chicken with roasted potatoes, we recommend that you cook them separately following our recipe.