Delicious Whole Roasted Chicken!

We're making a very classic, simple and easy but perfectly executed roast chicken. We have not made a roast chicken here together in a really long time and I want to show you my recent recipe for it which I think is just perfect. It's low fuss but absolutely scrumptious. You are left with the most delicious, tender, juicy meat with a gorgeous golden brown skin and it's perfect. It takes like five minutes to put together, the oven does the rest of the work and it's literally a winner every single time. The first thing you're going to work on, obviously preheat your oven, I've got a little roasting pan here and I have a little rack in my roasting pan, you can see my rack is a little low, I want to elevate that a little bit so what I'm going to do since I want the flavor of the onion anyway, I'm going to take this onion and I'm going to cut it into quarters and I'm just going to pop, I'm not even going to peel it. I'm also going to cut a bunch of garlic, if you have a whole head of garlic just chop it in the middle like that, it does not matter because it's just going to be there for flavor on the bottom. So I'm just going to take my onion, kind of prop it up like that, okay? And then take your garlic, I'm just going to take those outer layers off and now watch. Now my chicken is going to be really nicely elevated and it's not going to touch the bottom and therefore it gets really good and like perfectly cooked all around. Now the chicken of choice, small chicken is really going to be your best bet, anywhere between four and five pounds is what I go for, any bigger than that, not my jam, I just don't feel like it tastes as good, so this is around the four and a half pound whole chicken obviously, cleaned, whatever that means to you, you know what it means to me. You want to make sure you take any innards out and it's really nicely and patted dry. Before I touch this though, I want to work on my spice rub and I want to work on my butter because I am going to stuff a little bit of butter between the skin and the meat just to keep it really moist and it almost like self-bastes itself as it's cooking. I've got some softened butter to this, in this little container, I'm going to add about a half a teaspoon of dried rosemary, now my dried rosemary I pass it through a coffee bean grinder that's just for whole spices and that way my dried rosemary is like somewhat pulverized, it's not super sharp and spiky, I don't like that, okay? It's not the vibe, it's not the move, that's what I'm going for, okay? A little bit of salt and a little bit of pep, give that a little mix and now you have your butter ready and now to sprinkle all over for incredible flavor that will go so far, what I have in here is a teaspoon each rosemary, garlic, onion, paprika and then I have a half a teaspoon of black pepper and I'm going to do about a teaspoon roughly, perhaps a bit more because I can handle it, it's a big bird of salt, I'm going to mix that around and that is a spice mixture that I'm going to sprinkle all over the top, the sides, everywhere on this bird and now I'm going take a lemon, I'm going to cut it in half and now that we're pretty much ready, I'm ready to get this stuffed. I've got a piece of twine here, I don't always do this but tying the legs together just with drumsticks kind of keeps it contained and it just cooks a little bit more evenly, I want to salt the inside of this chicken because once you salt it on the inside that flavor will penetrate through, that's a good thing, take your lemon, pop it in there like that, you're going to loosen the skin from the breast, do this carefully, you can also just take your spoon and let that help you like that, see how I'm doing it really really gently, I shared this in a Reels and someone messaged me and they wrote me a long paragraph which I love to read and they this right here is the most helpful thing that they've ever seen done on a food channel or television because their fingers aren't long enough to go all the way through and I don't know why that made me laugh but I'm glad! Take a spoonful of your butter mixture and then you just hold on to the skin at the end and then just have the butter, have the spoon help you push that butter all the way and this is going to seep all the way in here and it's going to leave you with the most succulent chicken ever, believe me, there's something about a roast chicken that on a winter day, on a summer day, on a spring day, it doesn't matter what the weather condition, it always is going to hit just right so it's one of those things that you should definitely perfect and this method I think is pretty spot on. Okay, now that we have that I'm going to tie the legs together. Okay, so I'm going to just take a piece of kitchen twine and literally just maneuver them so that they're snug. I washed my hands, I want to keep this hand clean because I have to touch the olive oil bottle, set that out of the way, bring this closer to me. Okay, now I'm going to take my olive oil and I'm just going to just going to massage this all around, don't be afraid, the thing that makes my food really delicious, I have to be honest with you, every time people come over they're like oh why is your food so good and I use the same recipe but mine's not quite as good, is I always say it's because I love and I'm not afraid of salt and I'm not afraid of olive oil, I'm not afraid of salt and I'm not afraid of fat and believe me when I tell you that does make such a huge difference. You can see what I'm doing is as I'm sprinkling I'm kind of using my hand to press it into areas that may be falling off, that's a really neat little trick because sometimes it's hard to get into little crevices you know but I don't know about you, I want everything to taste so good, everything I eat has to be excellent, I don't like any mediocre food, you know what I mean, I'm not one for that. Take a bit more olive oil, drizzle that over the top and you're not adding much but it's just going to help with that gorgeous crust and take the wings, tuck them under like so, so that they cook evenly and now this is going to go into your oven, wash your hands first, 425 for 30 minutes, after 30 minutes you're going to knock it down to 315, continue cooking it for another hour to an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half, it really just depends on how big your chicken is until the internal temperature that you will test right here between the sort of leg and thigh all the way deep in there without touching a bone reaches 170 degrees and then you'll let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes before we carve it and it's perfect every single time, so you see not that complicated, it's not using a bunch of things that you might not already have on hand but just giving it the proper cooking time and just that proper seasoning and the butter and the oil, oh I do have to add something to my pan, might as well because I have to cook them anyway, it's going to make like a nice little pan sauce, not a gravy although it can be if you want it to be, if you want to thicken it up, I just like to use it as like a nice little thin pan sauce, all you need to do is add a little dry white wine and some chicken stock around the pan and this is why I also like to elevate my chicken because I don't like it to sit in that and now it's going to go into the oven, 450 then 350. That is a gorgeously perfectly roasted chicken, the internal temperature is 170, mine was in the oven at 450 for 30 minutes then I turned it down to 350 for exactly an hour and look at those gorgeous pan juices that you're going to be able to drizzle all over the top of everything and if you want that to be a thick gravy all you do is you pour these juices in a saucepan, bring them to a boil and then you're just going to add a cornstarch slurry to that which is just cornstarch with a little bit of water, I would suggest two teaspoons of cornstarch to a couple tablespoons of water and it will thicken and it will be gorgeous, season them with a little bit of salt if needed, maybe a squeeze of lemon at the end and it's perfect. I like the juices because I'm going to just pour all over the chicken, it's making my absolutely water. I've let this cool for probably 15 or 20 minutes or so, it is important that you let your meat always rest for a good amount of time because you don't want all of those juices that you worked so so hard to create, you don't want them to run out all over the place. It's important that you have an appropriate cutting board, one that's you know it's got some depth to it so that the juices run through, you know run out, they don't run all the way through and out on your cutting board and you need a very very very sharp knife or a cleaver and I just go ahead and get rid of the legs first, the leg and thigh mixture, I kind of cut through it, look at all those amazing juices and then because this is really sharp, I'm going to be able to cut right through, I just need to push it a little bit closer to me and that's what it looks like, so there's your leg and thigh, you can split them up if you want to, the little wing comes right off and then the breasts, now remember this is a small chicken, this is not a turkey so it's not going to be massive because I don't want that, I don't want a huge chicken, I want a small chicken and then your breasts, I like to just go all the way down, you'll feel resistance right in the middle and you kind of want to go around that, just like so, I'm going to cut like that and then the whole thing pretty much comes off in one go, it's still really hot though, so I like to cut the breast just like that and I know that you know cutting poultry on camera is so not the most fabulous thing to do, it's certainly not the most neat thing to do but you know, this is probably something you're going to want to see, you want it to see, so that's pretty much it, I'm going to repeat the exact same thing on the other side and it's good, that is beautiful, please make sure you do not toss away that carcass because there's a lot of meat on there and it makes for the most fantastic base for something like a lemony chicken orzo soup, it would be just phenomenal, but this to me is like, like I said, it hits all the things, whether you want a comfort food or you want something that's just light and gorgeous, these are those beautiful, beautiful pan juices that are so filled with flavor, it's just making my mouth water just thinking about it, I like to serve this on the side, especially if you're going to make a thing of rice to serve along with this, then you just pour these juices over top of the rice and the chicken, it is just, it's really sensational, if you want to make a chimichurri sauce to serve on top of that, you'd be winning the lottery, my friend, you would be winning the lottery, but that is it, it's gorgeous, it's easy, it's simple and it's perfect every single time, I'm just going to go for this piece right here just because look at that, my mouth is watering, it's just like it just falls apart, it's just so tender. It's so delicious, it's so flavorful, it's so tender, it's everything I want it to be, so make sure you go to LauraintheKitchen.com for the written recipe, check the description down below, hope you've enjoyed spending time with me and I will see you in the next one. Bye!