roasted chicken

Meet my best roasted chicken ever. I am on a serious winter cooking kick. We got home from Mexico about two weeks ago to lots of snow in Toronto and I’ve been cooking and trying to catch up on laundry ever since.

I’ve made this yogurt-lemon-garlic-thyme roasted chicken twice in the time we have been home and it is probably the most moist and flavourful chicken I have ever had. I love it. Something about the garlic, lemon, yogurt combination quickly brines the chicken and packs so much flavour. The plus of cooking a whole chicken? So much cheaper then buying pieces of chicken and you have leftovers for days (leftovers = my happy place).

How did I get the idea for this? When I was waching Salt Fat Acid Heat and saw how Samin Nosrat marinated her chicken in buttermilk for 24 hours before roasting and it turned ino the most gorgeous brown tender looking chicken ever, I knew I had to try it.

I don’t have buttermilk on hand usually, but I do have plain full fat yogurt and lemons as staples and it worked amazingly well.

Ingredients:

1 organic whole chicken

3 heaping tbsp plain full fat yogurt

3 cloves garlic peeled and roughly chopped

salt and pepper

1 tsp thyme

1 lemon

Generously salt and pepper the chicken on both sides and set on a plate. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a large plastic freezer bag. Be sure to squeeze all the juice out of the lemon and and throw the actual lemon in the marinade as well (more flavour). Put the raw chicken in bag with the marinade and rub it all over the chicken and set in fridge for 24 hours minimum. I always marinate for 24-36 hours and the flavour is so much better if you can do it. Quck note, plastic freezer bags rarely leak but I always place it on a plate in my fridge underneath it as no one wants raw chicken spilling.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. I like to line my cast iron pan with parchment and cook the chicken in that. But any oven safe dish will work if you don’t have a cast iron. Let chicken come to room temperature by sitting on the counter for 15 minutes. Place chicken on parchment lined pan and roast for 30 minutes at 400. After the 30 minutes is up reduce oven temperature to 350 and roast for another 60 mintes. So that’s 90 minutes of total roasting: first 30 minutes at 400 degrees and then 60 minutes at 350 degrees. Your house will smell divine at this point too.

When time is up and chicken is brown and crispy remove chicken from oven and let rest ten minutes before tearing into it. I almost always steal a wing or drumstick at this point for my efforts. Hope you enjoy the recipe, friends and stay warm!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment *