Leave-It-Alone Roast Chicken

Roast chicken is on constant rotation Chez Nous ... especially during the fall and winter! When the temperatures start dipping, it's so cozy to smell the heady fragrance of meat, citrus, and herbs. Makes me want a wood fire to roast over! Between Dorie Greenspan, my daughter, and me, (and lots of testing this or that method), I've come up with possibly the easiest way to make roast chicken. You just leave it alone ... therefore the name of this recipe (if it can be called a recipe), Leave-It-Alone Roast Chicken.

I've tried many methods of roasting chicken over the years.

• Great chefs have suggested stuffing herbed butter between the skin and the flesh. Each and every time I've tried this very "chef-fy" method, it as left me with a smoky kitchen, scurrying to open windows, and turn on fans! Comical sometimes! And I don't even get as crispy of a skin as I require on any roast chicken that I consume!
• Other great chefs suggest that I should stuff the bird! Too much, people, SO VERY VERY much! I don't even stuff my Thanksgiving turkey so I'm certainly not going to stuff a casual Sunday roast. And really, come on, is there even enough room in a chicken for enough stuffing for dinner? Let's just face the facts.
• Still other great chefs have suggested roasting the chicken for a bit breast side up, then turning it over so the juices seep back into the breasts (which tend to dry out), then turning it back towards the end of roasting to get the breast skin crispy. That's a lot of opening and closing of the oven and handling a very hot bird! Can't it be easier? Yes, it can. It most certainly can. Keep reading, my friend.

Let me tell you about this collaboration with Dorie and my daughter for Leave-It-Alone Roast Chicken

I wish I could say that it was truly an in person collaboration! I've met Dorie in person more than once and she is delightful. She even asked me to address the audience at one meeting! It's widely known that I adore both Dorie AND my daughter so to have them both influence the way I've landed on a chicken roasting method is KOABD (kind of a big deal)!

All of that said ... Dorie has a recipe in her cookbook Around My French Table that she calls Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux. Which, being interpreted, is roast chicken for lazy people! Doesn't laziness sound so much better en francais? Les paresseux ... (roughly pronounced lay pahraysuh) makes laziness sound not so negative.

After all of my trying different methods to arrive at a roast chicken that was successful every.single.time. my daughter said to me, "Mom, just be lazy about it! Dorie says it's OK!" And God knows that my daughter with four sweet Littles under the age of six has no extra time to make something as simple as roast chicken more complicated than it has to be!

Season the cavity!

I like to put some aromatics in the cavity ... some citrus and herbs. They lend quite a bit of flavor to the juices! If you're new to roasting chicken, check to be sure there's no bag of "innards" tucked in there! If there is, just pull it out. Some people like to eat them ... I'm not one of those people, but you can save it for making chicken stock. If you don't make chicken stock, freeze that little bag and look for a friend who does. Waste not, want not.

Before I put the aromatics in the cavity, I salt it. Just hold the bird up and sprinkle salt inside. There's lots of meat between the skin and the bone and if you only salt the outside, you're missing out on seasoning.

Put all of the citrus and herbs inside, tie the legs together and tuck the wings under its butt.

Now the fun part of seasoning the skin!

I start with a coating of oil, then salt and pepper for sure. You can stop there and the chicken would be delicious.

However, you can also get creative with herbs and make a roast chicken that won't soon be forgotten. How about thyme? Tarragon? Marjoram? Rosemary, oregano, and sage? What about za'atar and sumac as the chicken in the photo below is adorned thus indulging my recent dive into mid-eastern spices and flavors? You can be as creative as you want!

The easy roasting part

After oiling and seasoning the bird, put it in a Dutch oven ... a cast iron one works, an enameled coated one works ... you can even use a clay pot like the one I have from Pampered Chef that I bought YEARS ago.

Then put the cooking dish in a preheated 450-degree oven ... and leave it alone for 1 ½ hours. That's it.

Just. Leave. It. The. Heck. Alone.

I cannot emphasize this enough! Don't check on it. No poking it with the thermometer. Basting is not needed. JUST. LEAVE. IT. ALONE.

It's happy and becoming something different. The deliciousness will be everything you dreamed a roast chicken could be. And then, you'll be happy, too.

Recipe

Leave-It-Alone Roast Chicken

Tammy Circeo

Between Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux (the lazy) in her Around My French Table cookbook, and my daughter's coaxing me to just be lazy about the roast chicken (after many attempts at various chef's techniques), I finally conceded that leaving the chicken to its own devices in the oven is the absolute right thing to do. Read on and do as I do.

5 from 3 votes

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr 30 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr 40 minutes mins

Course Dinner

Cuisine American, French, Irish, Italian, Mid-Eastern

Servings 6 people-ish

Ingredients

  

• 1 3-5 pound chicken
• oil to rub on the chicken
• salt and pepper to season
• ¼ orange reserve the other ¾
• ½ lemon reserve the other ½
• 2-4 cloves fresh garlic
• herbs of choice thyme ,tarragon, marjoram, sage, rosemary, za'atar, sumac (see notes)
• oil for the roasting dish

Instructions

 

• Preheat the oven to 450°F.
• Remove the chicken from the fridge a half hour before putting it in the oven.
• Rub the chicken all over with a high-smoke point oil like avocado oil.
• During the half hour of bringing the chicken more to room temperature, season the cavity of the chicken with salt and put the orange, lemon, garlic, and herbs in the cavity of the chicken.
• Lightly oil a Dutch oven or pottery bowl and put the chicken. Roast it uncovered and untouched for 1½ hours.
• Just leave it alone. Trust me.
• When 1½ hours are up, take it out, and let it rest for a few minutes ... 15-30 ... before carving it.
• When you move the chicken to the cutting board to carve it, reheat the juices in the Dutch oven and squeeze the juice from the reserved orange and lemon into the pot. Reduce slightly, then serve with the chicken.

Notes

About the herbs: Man, this could be a long discussion! I listed some of my favorites with thyme being at the top. But you should use what your tastes love. I love za'atar and sumac for a bit of mid-eastern profile and they marry very well with the citrus and oregano. 

Keyword chicken, roast chicken