Roasting a whole chicken seems intimidating, but it’s only as complicated as you make it. You don’t have to stuff it, you don’t have to truss it, you don’t have to do anything particularly fancy to season it. You CAN choose to do any or all of those things, but if you opt not to, you will still end up with some delicious food.
There is only one rule that you must follow: cook it by temperature, not by time. How long it takes a roast chicken to fully cook depends on a variety of factors: the size of the bird, its temperature before you start cooking it, the temperature of the oven, whether it’s stuffed, etc. It is impossible to accurately estimate the time it will take. The only sure-fire way to cook a whole chicken so that it is neither undercooked nor overcooked is to stick a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the breast meat — the part that will take the longest time for the oven heat to reach it — and cook it until the thermometer reads 160 degrees F.
If you are cooking a big 20-pound turkey that will be in the oven for hours, you need to think hard about oven temperature (and basting) because the outer part will get cooked a lot and dry out before the inner part is safely cooked. Not so for a 4-5 pound chicken — it will be in the oven for somewhere around an hour, not enough time to do much damage. You can cook a small chicken at 325 degrees, or at 425 degrees — one will take longer than the other, but it will turn out great either way.
Here is the simplest way to roast a whole chicken. Try this a couple of times, and when you feel comfortable with it, start changing things up. Just remember to always use a thermometer in the thickest part of the meat and cook it to 160 degrees.
Serves 4. Preparation time: about 1 1/2 hours.
Ingredients:
- 1 whole store-bought chicken, 3-5 lbs.
- Olive oil
- 1 tbsp. kosher salt
- 1/2 tbsp. black pepper
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Position an oven rack so that there is enough space above it for a roasting pan and chicken.
Remove the chicken from the wrapping, and place it on a rack in the roasting pan with the breasts up. Don’t rinse the chicken. It’s not necessary, and it will just contaminate your sink with raw chicken. If at all possible, you want the chicken to be sitting on a rack inside the roasting pan, and not on the bottom of the pan, so that when it starts juices as it cooks the bottom of the chicken is not sitting in the juices.
Mix the salt and pepper together in a small bowl. Rub it onto the outside of the chicken, as well as onto the interior cavity. This is a minimalist approach to seasoning a chicken, but it’s plenty on its own.
Drizzle olive oil onto the outside of the chicken and spread it evenly. The oil transfers heat to the skin and will help to crisp it up.
Insert a meat thermometer into the center of the thickest part of the breast meat. Take note as to where the sensor on your thermometer is — usually it’s at the tip. That’s the part you want at the thickest part of the meat so that we know when the heat has penetrated all the way through. This is assuming that you haven’t stuffed the chicken: in an unstuffed chicken the hot oven air can flow into the cavity and cook the chicken from the inside-out as well as outside-in. If you stuff it, then you need to be much more careful about checking the temperature in the center (and especially so if the stuffing wasn’t hot when you added it to the chicken). For simplicity’s sake, I strongly discourage you from stuffing the chicken until you’ve roasted a chicken several times and have found your comfort level with checking temperature and doneness.
Place the roasting pan with the chicken in the oven, positioning it so that you can read the thermometer through the oven window. You want to avoid having to open up the oven frequently to check the temperature, especially at the end when it’s close.
Bake at 425 degrees until the thermometer reads 160 degrees F. 160 degrees is safe to eat — harmful bacteria have been killed. If you cook it to a higher temperature, you will progressively dry out the meat (the closer to 212 degrees it gets, the more liquid will evaporate off).
Remove the chicken from the oven, and let it sit for 10 minutes before carving. Two things are happening here: first, “carryover cooking,” which will increase the center temperature another 5 degrees or so as heat continues to move from the outer layers (which are hotter than 160) to the center. Second, the outer layers start to cool a bit, which will make them easier to carve.
Serve warm.
Tips and suggestions:
- If you need to use your oven to simultaneously bake other dishes while the chicken is cooking, you can adjust the temperature — just be aware that it will affect the cooking time for the chicken. This is part of the beauty of cooking by temperature rather than by time: you have more flexibility in how you use your oven.
- Even if you don’t want to make stuffing, you can place items in the cavity of the chicken to add flavor. Sprigs of herbs, such as thyme and rosemary, work well. Also a lemon (poke several holes it in).
- I strongly recommend using disposable kitchen prep gloves while making this recipe — probably a few pairs over the course of assembling it and rubbing things onto the chicken. You really don’t want to spread bacteria around your kitchen. And once the chicken is in the oven, wash your hands, your kitchen counter, and any utensils you used carefully.
- A word on temperature and carryover cooking, topics which can get a bit complicated. Many sources will tell you that 165 degrees F, not 160, is the safe temperature to cook poultry to kill off the harmful bacteria. The truth is more complicated, because killing bacteria involves holding it at a specific temperature for a certain amount of time. Raising it to 165 degrees instantaneously kills off most bacteria, but keeping it at 150 degrees for 5 minutes will also kill them. This is how “sous vide” cooking works and what makes it safe: a lower temperature, but a much longer time. In our case, you could cook the chicken until the center reaches 165 — but in the process it will have reached 150 or above for more than 5 minutes and have already killed off the bacteria. 160 degrees is fine, particularly since the carryover cooking after you remove the chicken from the oven will still probably raise its center temperature to 165. We want a certain amount of extra cooking because it’s impossible to tell from the outside of a chicken exactly where the thickest part is that will take the longest time to heat: if we put our thermometer somewhere close to that point and add a little wiggle room, we’re good. But we don’t want so much extra cooking that we overcook and dry out the meat. If you decide to cook it to 165 instead of 160, I won’t judge you — safety is paramount, and you should do what you think is right.
- The reality is that we still need to time dinner, including the side dishes, so we can’t just cook to temperature. Once again, the flexibility to change the oven temperature works to your advantage. If the chicken is cooking too quickly, you can slow it down by lowering the temperature (say, to 325).
- There are all sorts of ways to season a chicken. And it’s pretty hard to go wrong. You should definitely experiment, once you have mastered the basics of safely roasting a chicken.