Perfect roast chicken recipe | Jamie Oliver Christmas recipes (2024)

FAQs

What not to do when roasting a chicken? ›

Weigh your chicken and calculate the cooking time according to the guide below. Sit the bird in a roasting tin slightly larger than the chicken, and don't cover it with foil or you won't achieve a crisp skin. Basting your chicken during cooking will help keep the meat moist.

The word bake is usually used when a dish is covered in sauce or cooked in a covered pot. Roasting is often more simple, usually involving a meat or vegetable being coated in oil or another fat, seasoned, and then cooked in an open pan or on a rack.

If you want your chicken to be truly roasted with crisp, golden-brown skin, it needs to spend time in the oven uncovered. If you find that some parts of the skin are browning more rapidly than others, you can loosely tent the browner parts with foil to allow the rest of the skin to catch up.

Her suggestion: Place boneless, skinless chicken breasts in a pan in a single layer, cover with a few inches of liquid (water, broth, etc.), add flavorings (spices, salt, herbs, soy sauce, etc.), then bring the liquid just barely to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat so the liquid simmers.

You can roast or bake anywhere between 325 and 450 degrees F. When roasting a whole chicken, a nice rule of them is to start at 400 to 425 degrees F and then turn the oven down to 350 after 15 minutes and cook until the internal temp of the chicken is 165 – 175 degrees F on an instant read thermometer.

Remove the vegetables and the pan juices to a plate before finishing cooking the chicken. This will keep the skin crisp in the pan. You'll want to flip the chicken over once it reaches 145-150 degrees Fahrenheit to give the breast meat enough time to caramelize under the broiler.

But the one way to prevent the breasts from drying out even with longer cooking times is to brine it first. There are a couple ways to do this with dry and wet brines. Wet brining means you dissolve salt in water and submerge the bird for several hours. (I love a wet-brined chicken.)

How do you keep chicken from drying out in the oven? ›

When chicken is covered while baking, it traps steam and moisture within the dish, resulting in juicier results. The covering helps prevent excessive evaporation and keeps the chicken moist throughout the cooking process. Preventing dryness. Chicken tends to dry out more quickly when exposed to direct heat.

Roasters: Typically more than 4 lb (2 kg), roasters are older and more flavourful than broilers. They are ideal for roasting but can also be poached for soups, salads, sandwiches and casseroles. Capons: A favourite for roasting, capons are desexed roosters and weigh from 4 to 10 lb (2 to 4.5 kg).

Roasting, like baking, is a method of cooking that uses hot, dry air to cook food in the oven, but at higher temperatures. Roasting is typically used for foods with a solid structure such as vegetables and meats. Roasting uses the bake setting at 400ºF (204ºC) or higher to brown the surface and develop flavor.

Easy. Rack-roasting means the whole chicken is surrounded by dry heat the entire time it cooks—which means every last bit of skin gets nice and crispy.

Truss the legs of the bird

It's a little fussy, but trussing a chicken has an important effect on the finished product: when the wings and legs are tucked in close to the body, the end of the drumstick covers part of the breast, making sure it stays moist and helping the chicken cook evenly.

Always let your bird come to room temperature, by leaving it outside of the fridge, covered, for an hour before cooking it. Why? Because your bird will cook unevenly otherwise. Many recipes suggest you rinse your bird before roasting it, but for most store-bought chickens this step isn't necessary.

If you can, leave at least one hour for the seasoned chicken to rest in the refrigerator, uncovered, before it's time to cook. Longer is even better, up to 24 hours. The result is noticeably crispier skin.