How to Roast a Whole Chicken: 9 Tips for Roasting Chicken

No matter what roast chicken recipe you use, these tips will help you achieve perfectly browned skin and juicy meat each time.

1. 1. Brine your chicken. Roasting a chicken isn’t difficult, but it does require planning ahead. Seasoning your chicken a day or two before you plan to cook—whether it’s with a dry brine, wet brine, or marinade—will allow the salt to penetrate all parts of your chicken. When it does, the salt not only flavors the chicken, it also helps keep the chicken moist by altering the meat’s protein strands to retain more water.
2. 2. Add dairy. Brining your chicken in buttermilk, sour milk, or yogurt can further tenderize the meat and add flavor. Brushing clarified butter onto the chicken skin just before roasting will create deeper caramelization due to the sugars present in milk.
3. 3. Rub aromatics under the skin. For a flavor boost, use your fingers to loosen the skin away from the chicken breasts and thighs. You can add herb butter, fresh herbs, or extra marinade into these skin pockets to trap flavor between the meat and the skin.
4. 4. Cook stuffing separately. Stuffing your chicken will increase cook time and potentially result in an unevenly-cooked bird. If you want to serve stuffing with your chicken, cook it separately.
5. 5. Temper the chicken before roasting. Tempering food is a simple but critical step that involves bringing an ingredient to room temperature prior to cooking so that it cooks more evenly. Tempering is important with most proteins, but it’s essential when oven-roasting large cuts of meat because it allows the meat to cook efficiently.
6. 6. Prepare the chicken. Don’t just throw your chicken in the oven—take a minute to trim and tie it. Tie the legs up to help the thighs brown, and remove the wing tips, which tend to burn. (Save them for stock.) If you prefer to leave the wing tips on, cover them with aluminum foil or parchment paper, or tuck the wing tips underneath the shoulders to prevent them from burning. Some cooks like to spatchcock, or butterfly, their chicken so that it can lie flat on a baking sheet. This increases the chicken’s surface area for faster, more even cooking.
7. 7. Place your chicken in the back corner of the oven. One way to deal with the fact that different parts of the chicken cook differently is to take advantage of the fact that different parts of the oven are hotter than others; the back of the oven tends to be hotter than the front. Position your chicken in the very back corner of your oven with the legs pointing straight into the corner and the breasts pointing toward the center of the oven. Partway through cooking, switch the chicken to the other corner so that the left and right sides of the bird are cooked evenly. (Keep the breasts pointing toward the center of the oven.)
8. 8. Start hot, then cool down. High oven temperatures will cause browning but can also lead to overcooking. To prevent this, start your chicken in a hot oven. Once the chicken starts to brown, turn down the heat to maintain the perfect temperature.
9. 9. Let the chicken rest. Carryover cooking means that larger cuts or meat (such as whole chickens) will continue to cook after you take them out of the oven. For a three- to four-pound chicken, ten to twenty minutes should be enough.

The short answer is that it takes around 70 minutes to roast a chicken in the oven. The long answer is that the cook time will depend on oven temperature and the size of your chicken. The best way to gauge the actual temperature of the oven is to use an oven thermometer. Roasting is generally best between 350°F and 450°F. If you’re using a convection oven, which uses fans to circulate the hot air, consider reducing your oven temperature by 25°F, and check your chicken more frequently.

As for the size of your chicken, larger cuts of meat take longer to cook, and bone-in cuts like a whole chicken need additional time (the bones and the sheer size create insulation, which slows the cooking down). Even if your oven is cranked up high, a big bird will take longer to roast than a small one, so take that into consideration.

To check if your chicken is done, there are a few methods:

1. 1. Thermometer: If you have a digital instant-read thermometer or meat thermometer, you can stick the thermometer in the center of the breast and the thigh. It should read 160°F. Ideally, the thigh will be a little hotter than the breast.
2. 2. Leg wiggle: To check if your chicken is ready without a thermometer, give one of the legs a wiggle. It should move around freely and feel like it would easily separate from the rest of the bird.
3. 3. Juice test: Stick a knife into the thigh. If the juices run clear, your chicken should be good to go.

Once you’ve roasted a chicken and let it rest, it’s time to carve.

1. 1. Drain the juice. As the chicken cooks, juice collects in the pan and in the cavity of the chicken. Using tongs, carefully pour the juice from the cavity into the roasting pan. (Later, you can pour the juice into a gravy boat and serve it with the chicken.) Transfer the chicken to a cutting board (a grooved wooden cutting board is best) to begin carving.
2. 2. Remove the legs. Make your first cut is at the joint where the leg meets the body of the chicken. Use a fork (or carving fork, if you have it) to steady the breastbone of the chicken while you slice into the skin between the leg and the body. Wiggle the leg a little to expose the hip joint, then use the tip of your knife to sever the joint. Repeat on the other side.
3. 3. Separate the thighs from the drumsticks. With the leg skin side down on the cutting board, use your fork to steady the thigh. Use your knife to cut in between the thigh and the drumstick, piercing the joint between the thigh and the drumstick. Repeat with the other leg.
4. 4. Remove the breasts. Anchor your fork in the breastbone. With your knife next to the wing, make one diagonal cut from the top of the breast to the bottom. Repeat on the other side. Next, with your fork in the breast meat, cut along the breastbone. Remove each breast from the ribcage by angling your knife downward and away from the breastbone. You can serve the breasts whole or sliced.
5. 5. Remove the wings. One at a time, pull each wing away from the body and cut through the wing joint.

Once you’ve carved your chicken into perfect serving pieces, keep the carcass. Shred any meat off the carcass while it’s still warm for use in tacos or chicken salad. Any leftover bones, skin, and cartilage can be turned into a wonderful chicken stock.