Roast Chicken

By Food & Wine
Updated October 23, 2019
Con Poulos
Roast chicken is a great dish for family dinners and parties. Preparing is as simple as adding in some herbs and roasting in the oven. Here are a collection of our favorite roasted chicken dishes. These incredible recipes include Julia Child's favorite roast chicken and juicy honey-and-lemon-glazed roast chicken.
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Buttermilk-Brined Roast Chicken


David Cicconi
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Chefs Evan and Sarah Rich of RT Rotisserie in San Francisco make the very best chicken. They use a buttermilk brine that includes umami powder, garlic and Douglas fir—a signature ingredient from their flagship restaurant, Rich Table, that they forage themselves. In this adaptation, the chicken is roasted in the oven, and the brine is made with buttermilk, dried porcini, garlic and rosemary, though if you have access to Douglas fir sprigs, feel free to use them.

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Roast Chicken with Pickled Fennel and Candied Walnuts

© Tara Pearce
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The tart fennel and sweet walnuts here make this roast chicken especially good. The orange dressing has nutty flavor, too, because it’s spiked with walnut oil.

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Chicken Roasted on Bread with Caperberries and Charred Lemon

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In this supersimple dish from Justin Chapple, chicken legs roast on top of torn pieces of bread that absorb the rich and tangy juices, becoming deliciously crisp and chewy.

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Roast Chicken with Salsa Verde and Roasted Lemons

Con Poulos
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This crisp and juicy roast chicken from star chef Jonathan Waxman of NYC's Jams is perfect with his chunky seven-herb salsa verde.

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Butter-Roasted Chicken with Soy-Garlic Glaze

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F&W’s Kay Chun rubs an Asian-spiced butter under chicken skin before roasting to create an incredibly juicy and delicious bird.

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Honey-and-Lemon-Glazed Roast Chicken

Fredrika Stjärne
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“I’m crazy for chicken,” Piero Incisa della Rocchetta says. “I regularly eat a whole one by myself.” Inspired by beautifully browned Peking duck, he brushes chickens with a mixture of soy sauce and honey.

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Lizzie's Roasted Chicken

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Roast Chicken with Butternut Squash

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Chicken quarters roasted with golden squash and sage are nice for a chilly autumn evening. To help the squash to brown evenly, be sure to spoon off the fat from the roasting pan after removing the breasts. This is a case where less is more: A thin layer of fat will brown the vegetable better than a quarter-inch of it.

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Ginger-Roasted Chicken

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Try pairing this roasted chicken with an aromatic Riesling.

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Roast Chicken with Tangerines

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This six-pound bird yields a lot of meat. But if you want even more, get a capon (a castrated rooster). They’re quite huge: nine to 11 pounds. (You’ll have to increase the amount of ingredients relative to the size of the bird, which will also take longer to cook.)

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Spicy Roast Chicken

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This roast chicken gets a kick from ancho chili powder and a jalapeño brine.

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Roasted Chicken with Garlic-Thyme Butter

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Grant Achatz’s favorite comfort food is a simple roasted chicken. To give the bird extra flavor, he rubs garlicky butter under the breast skin and packs the cavity with more garlic, plus thyme sprigs and lemon quarters. After the chicken is cooked, he uses the juices to make an intensely flavored sauce that’s delicious with the bird.

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Sour-Orange Yucatán Chickens

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Brined Roast Chicken with Olive Bread Panzanella

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This is a fantastic roast chicken, but the real star in the recipe is the olive bread, which gets spread in the roasting pan and toasted in the chicken pan juices. The bread turns custardy on the inside and crunchy on the outside.

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Spicy Pita Pockets with Chicken, Lentils, and Tahini Sauce

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Here’s something to do with leftover roasted chicken—a Middle Eastern sandwich chock-full of spicy lentils, bulgur, lettuce, tomato and tahini sauce. Two pockets per person is enough to make a meal. If you like, serve extra Tabasco sauce at the table. You can find tahini (sesame-seed paste) in most supermarkets.

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Chicken Couscous Salad

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Tea-Smoked Roast Chickens

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“This recipe looks like a doozy, but it really delivers,” says Andrea Reusing. “The chickens are just so reliably juicy, even when they’re cooked longer than they should be.” Smoking the birds quickly over anise-scented tea makes them wonderfully fragrant. If you prefer to cook one chicken instead of two, smoke it in a wok or a pot rather than a roasting pan.

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Pepper and Salt Chicken Wings

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Salt and pepper chicken wings have a crisp, spicy coating, and the recipe combines black and white pepper for an even more powerful flavor.

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Moroccan Roasted Chicken

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Aleppo-Pepper-and-Mint-Roasted Chicken

PHOTO © QUENTIN BACON
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Julia's Favorite Roast Chicken

CON POULOS
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Julia Child seasoned this roast chicken inside and out by packing sautéed vegetables, lemon slices and fresh herbs into the cavity, then rubbing the skin with butter. In typical French fashion, she trussed the bird to promote even cooking.

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Chicken with Slow-Roasted Tomatoes and Cheesy Grits

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As an accompaniment to her exceptionally crisp-skinned chicken, Marcia Kiesel roasts tomatoes until they’re tender and sweet. She cleverly uses some of the tomatoes to enrich the savory jus.

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Chilaquiles-Style Roasted Chicken Legs

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Chilaquiles is a baked Mexican dish that’s often made with leftover shredded chicken, tortilla strips and cheese. In her more substantial and refined version, Grace Parisi bakes whole chicken legs with tomatoes, hominy, jalapeños and tortilla chips.

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Pan-Roasted Chicken with Corn Relish

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This one-skillet recipe is based on a dish Cathal Armstrong’s father, Gerry, made when Armstrong was growing up in Dublin, with a big difference. “We only got fresh corn for our birthdays. Otherwise it was frozen.”

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Roast Chicken Dosas

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A dosa is an Indian-style crepe that's crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

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Pan-Roasted Chicken Breasts with Mole Negro

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Oaxaca is famous for its complex mole sauces, often made with more than 20 ingredients, like unsweetened chocolate, seeds and chiles. Since moles are so time-consuming to make, most Mexican cooks rely on the prepared pastes sold at the outdoor markets, and Alejando Ruíz Olmedo is no exception. Instead of stewing chicken in the mole, he takes a more elegant approach: He roasts chicken breasts until the skin is crisp and serves the mole alongside.

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Vinegar-Braised Chicken with Leeks and Peas

© JONNY VALIANT
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This easy main-course chicken dish is elegant enough for both entertaining and a simple weeknight dinner.

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Spice-Rubbed Roast Chicken with Two Sauces

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This crisp-skinned, juicy chicken is rubbed with a fennel-lemon mixture before roasting and served with smoky piri piri and spicy, herb-flecked wasakaka sauces.

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Rustic Garlic Chicken

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Yes, three heads of garlic. You don't have to peel the cloves first. They soften during cooking and take on a subtle sweetness. Each person squeezes the garlic out of its skin onto the plate to eat with the chicken.

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Roast Chicken with Ratatouille

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Thyme, rosemary and cayenne flavor Andrew Zimmern’s chicken before and during roasting. By roasting pieces rather than a whole bird, no carving is necessary.

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Crispy Roast Chicken and Shallots with Miso Gravy

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Buttermilk-Roasted Chicken with Date Butter

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Herb-Butter Roast Chicken with Tuscan-Style Bread Salad

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This homey bread salad smartly includes seared chicken livers and wing meat, which bring all the flavors of the dish together.

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Butter-Roasted Chicken with Cilantro and Mint

© John Kernick
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The key to this simple extra-crispy, tasty chicken is compound butter that's rubbed all over the bird before roasting.

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Cardamom Chicken with Rice Pilaf

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Sprinkled with cardamom, roasted until crisp, and topped with an apple-flavored sauce, chicken legs become extraordinary. The chicken is perfectly matched by the raisin-studded rice pilaf that's also flavored with cardamom.

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Roast Chicken Thighs with Tomato-Tapioca Porridge

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Wylie Dufresne serves his delicious crisp-skinned chicken with a simple, flavorful tomato-tapioca porridge.

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Roasted Chicken Legs with Potatoes and Kale

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For this one-pan dish, Grace Parisi roasts chicken legs on a bed of potatoes and kale so the meaty juices keep the vegetables moist.

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Herb-and-Lemon-Roasted Chicken

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This roast chicken is foolproof and fantastic. Plus, it's versatile enough for a weeknight dinner or weekend dinner party.

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Roast Chicken with Bread Salad

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This roast chicken, from chef Judy Rodgers at San Francisco's Zuni Café, is legendary. The reason it's so good is because she insists on small free-range birds (which tend to be juicier than large, lean roasters), a 24-hour salting period to allow the seasoning to penetrate deeply and a high roasting temperature for a supremely crispy skin. The accompanying bread salad is meant to be a bed on which to serve the roast chicken and sop up its delicious juices.