This is the best, easiest roast chicken recipe ever
But first, start filling the bath
0.5 Start filling the bath.
- Turn oven on to 220c fan forced or 230c non-fan.
- While your oven heats up, take chicken out of fridge, remove any packaging and lay it in a baking tray, breast side up (birds have a flat back and an arched chest, like the hull of a boat, with the breasts either side of the arch, so chances are, you already have the chicken right side up, lying on the flatter side).
- Cut an onion or a lemon (or both) in half, then chuck them in the chicken. Chickens have a hole, you can’t miss it. Leave the whole open, it’s fine.
- Rub the skin with olive oil and then salt. Any kind of salt. If you don’t have olive oil, just salt is also OK.
- Check the bath and turn the bath taps off if necessary. Insert bath salts, bath bombs, lotions, potions. Light candles, open bottle of wine, place wine and wine glass adjacent to bath, with your choice of reading or listening.
- Put the tray or pan carrying the chicken on any damned shelf of the oven.
- Set a timer for 60mins and forget about cooking dinner for an hour.
- Shout at your housemate or life partner that they should chop up some vegetables in another tray to roast at about the 40min or 30min time remaining mark, and also boil up some frozen peas with about 5mins to go.
- Enjoy your bath.
- When the timer goes bing, reluctantly leave the bath, dry yourself, paying particular attention to your sexiest bits. Wrap yourself in clean, soft clothes.
- Turn off the oven if the vegetables are done, if not let them continue roasting while you let the chicken rest for at least 15mins.
- Resting the chicken means taking the pan containing the chicken out of the oven and letting it rest under a loose piece of foil, with a folded tea towel over the top of the foil. Don’t skimp on the 15mins rest time – the chicken smells amazing and due to the high heat of the oven. the skin looks all crispy and brown, but the meat close to the leg bones and the breast bone still need a little more time to really be done, and the resting time will let that happen, as well as allowing the meat to re-absorb some of the juices sitting in the pan and make the meat juicy and tender.
- If you’re the kind of person who likes making gravy, make gravy in the tray the chicken roasted in, using the juices and a little cornflour or plain flour, or fuck it, nobody’s judging you, some gravy powder. If you’re the kind of person who likes eating gravy but who really needs to take a moment because they’ve just drunk two big glasses of wine in a warm bath, point your house mate or life partner at these instructions and take your moment.
- Ask them to set the table – I mean, you cooked dinner! It’s the least they can do!
- There are ways to carve a chicken to improve the presentation but it’s all going to taste amazing in your mouth. Take a big knife and cut pieces off. The skin will be amazing, so make sure everybody gets a bit of that. Serve with those roast vegetables and maybe some of that gravy.
- Eat chicken.
- Flop on couch, fall asleep to Netflix.
