Roasted my first ever chicken.

I've always used the 20 minutes per lb and 20 over rule.

After first 30 minutes I baste every 15mins or so. Works every time, always juicy and tender but also fully cooked. My own oven isn't very hot despite being a fan oven so would normally roast around 180/190ish.

Perhaps the legs were just slightly discoloured and appeared underdone?
I would have thought 1.5 hrs should be enough even for a large chicken.

I make a few slashes in the legs with a knife before putting it in the oven and find it all cooks fine

You mentioned a cooking time (90 minutes), but didn't mention a temperature, so what was it?

I usually roast a chicken at 170 degrees for 90 minutes, and it's never been underdone. And that's with the oven being opened 3 or 4 times to throw in some chopped potatoes, carrots, onions. I'll stab the deepest meat in the chicken with a fork when doing this to drain some of the the juices and allow the vegetable cook in the chicken fat.

To deal with dryness, I usually put the chicken in breast down for the first 45 minutes, the turn it over when i put in the first vegetables (potato).

Just oil the baking tray so the chicken skin doesn't stick to it.

Chipping in...as veteran that has roasted hundreds of chickens when cooking for large family.

The temperature needs to be quite high for that crisp, golden "roasted" effect and also, so that the heat penetrates into the thicker parts.

If you cover with foil at any stage, that part of the chicken will get less heat; and also, there can be a sort of squelchy "steamed" effect which doesn't appeal to everyone;

It's damn rare to find a chicken that needs much more than an hour-and-a-half of oven time; Maybe a very large one might approach two hours.
I usually preheat the over to 200C, shove in my chicken on a tin (pretty much as-is, from the shop, with just a dollop of oil or butter) and roast for about 50 mins, then check: if the legs are getting spiky and the top skin is brown, I turn heat down to maybe 170C and leave for another half hour, but keep checking.

Delicately insert a skewer into breast near thigh joint, juices should be clear or almost clear - certainly not cloudy red or pink.
If they are, leave a bit longer! (you could turn oven heat down even more at this point, if needed)

In the end, take chicken out and turn oven off: cover chicken loosely at this stage and let it stand a while - the heat continues to cook the meat without any further scorching effect: it is during this time that I make the gravy from the rich juices in the roasting tin.

A note: putting stuff inside the cavity, such as stuffing or lemons, (tasty though it might be) will tend to slow down the cooking because there is more "solid" to be penetrated by heat. (and it is very important to cook stuffing right through or it may turn into a warm soggy squish of half-cooked chicken juice, really quite dangerous)

Sneaky hint: to speed up cooking, you can lay some thick metal cutlery like knives, spoons etc into the cavity - it conducts the heat into the interior.

Putting the bird upside down means you may not get crispy skin and it could stick to the pan and come off.

You need an instant read thermometer if you're roasting any meat.

Use below as a guide.



Just as an FYI, I cooked a 1.5kg chicken at the weekend - a version of this recipe - and it took 65 minutes.

rubadub wrote: »

A lot of people do not eat the skin

Weirdos