Roast Chicken With A Secret Ingredient

A roast chicken dinner is the bomb. It’s THE comfort food. I’ve tried other people’s methods. So here’s mine – the combination of what I’ve learned and experienced over <achoo> years, with a special nod to a secret ingredient my mother taught me. This recipe is just the chicken part, though I do have some vegetable tips below. This post is long, sorry, but my younger self would need this.

The Chicken

The quality of the chicken counts. I buy free-range / organic, because it makes a difference, not just at the table, but to the industry, supporting those farming principles.

The Marinade

Simple IS enough. Although when you have the base, you can mix it up with herbs and spices. Oh, I’ve sometimes bought those cheap supermarket pre-prepared butterfly chickens as a what-the-hell-I’ll-try-something-new, and nearly always been disappointed by the “fake marinade” taste, and the toughness of the bird. I’d rather prepare my own, and keep it simple with a crispy skin, thanks.

Timing

Nice for one’s blood pressure to prep all the ingredients well in advance. So when it comes time to cook, all there is to do is put everything in the oven, then check regularly and adjust if necessary. Think an hour and a half cooking. Good sized potatoes prepared and cut in half take about one-and-a-half hours of roasting to be crispy on the outside and soft within — which is roughly how long it takes a 2kg chicken to cook (40 minutes per kilo plus 15-20 minutes). A little fudge time doesn’t hurt.

Pre-prep

The chicken needs to marinade at least a few hours. Potatoes, peeled and cut and left in water for the day crisp up better. The water draws out the starch. Any other vegetables are fine to sit in the water with them. They are friends. They are vegeta-pals. Pumpkin can be sliced in advance and wrapped in foil with a little olive oil, then thrown in the oven in the last 40 minutes.

Olive oil

I see famous chefs using LOTS of olive oil before they put the chicken in. I only use a small bit of extra virgin olive oil across the skin (a token splash, sometimes not even that) more as an accompaniment to the secret herbs and spices (no secret herbs and spices, just wanted to use that phrase 😉). Instead of using oil, my mother used to cut off the parson’s nose and put it on top of the bird, allowing it to baste the chicken as it melted down. I take off the parson’s nose and discard it, because I don’t want that fat (though apparently some like it as a snacky-delicacy; see my post on icky fatty and slimy things here).

Lemon

Lemon is life. It brings most things to life, anyway. I always put half a lemon in the cavity. This becomes part of the roasting juices. Half a lemon’s fine. Over-filling the cavity just extends the cooking time.

Bed for the Chicken

It really, really likes a bed of sliced onion to keep it out of its own juices.

Baking Paper

Who wants excess washing up? Instead use a double layer of baking paper in the baking tray. This also enables me to change one layer of paper if the chicken skin’s particularly fatty and has dripped too much fat in the first forty minutes.

Secret Ingredient

Soy sauce. I don’t know where my mother got this tip from, because there’s no way she was using soy sauce on the farm. I’ve tried it without. Colour and taste works better with soy sauce, every time, every secret herbs and spice combination. Go figure.

“A crisp roast chicken would set the world aright.”

-George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows