Salt-and-Pepper Roast Chicken

I would add one thing to this great, easy recipe. Place the skillet in the oven while it is heating. That way when you put the chicken in the pan it gives an extra kick of heat to the dark meat which helps it finish cooking at the same time as the white meat. A small chicken can be cooked in as little as 40 minutes when the skillet is preheated.

Add some sliced golden yukon potatoes to the bottom of that skillet and you are a long way to a full meal.

Very good and very easy. To Melissa Clark's herb bundle of sage, rosemary and thyme, I added parsley. I'm not sure that it improved the flavor significantly. But to someone of the Simon and Garfunkel generation, it made the dish more lyrical.

Cooked one last night, using a rating-5 chicken (organic, never in a cage, sourced to one farm, etc). Came out perfect. My wife, a pilot, had just come home from flying a transatlantic flight from Zurich and visiting her dad in a stroke rehab and needed some comfort-she got it with this meal.

Perfect, no brains method used for years. Use an instant read thermometer to establish 'pull' temperature, 'present whole bird if desired then cover and rest about 15-20 minutes. $35 per serving in restaurant or ~$5-$6 at home. Tied dry herbs or citrus peel are fun but not essential; plain is perfectly OK. The REAL Key seems to be 24 hour drying after seasoning.

This is similar to Thomas Keller's simple roasted chicken recipe, high heat, air dry, salt and pepper, no vegetables that add steam.
My husband's favorite roasted chicken recipe.
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FYI it does spatter so I use a cast iron Dutch oven which has higher sides than a skillet. Make sure the fan is on.

Thanks, Nice. Two good reasons for TRUSSING the chicken (i.e., for using string to brace the wings and legs to the body while roasting.: Trussing will 1) keep the W&Ls from DRYING OUT/OVERCOOKING over the long roast session, i.e., they will cook more CONSISTENTLY in relation to the BODY of the chicken (which definitely takes LONGER to cook), and 2) the overall chicken will retain a better/traditional shape when done, rather than looking like it was caught in mid-jumping jack...

I threw some initial side-eye at this recipe, because it was just *too* easy. No dry brine? No roasting rack? You just plunk the thing in a skillet and walk away?

Yup.

Delicious, easy, flavorful. I threw some garlic in with the herbs in the cavity. Some chicken skin stuck to the skillet, which made a great skillet gravy. Will definitely do this one again!

I've been having good results with the high-temp method and even with preheating the pan.
In addition to salt and pepper, I add a generous amount of paprika. About halfway through the cooking time I add some quartered onions, carrot chunks, and a can or two of white potatoes, and pretend I'm a French grandmother.

My bird came out perfectly. Can't believe how easy this is. Got an air-dried chicken. Used a peri peri rub we get from a place in Seattle because we like a little spice. Supplemented that with salt and pepper. Had no fresh herbs so I smashed a couple of cloves of garlic for the cavity. Dried in the fridge overnight; roasted in my cast iron at 400 degrees. Took about 1 hour 10 mins.

Started it back side down then flipped to breast side down to make sure it stayed moist.

I will never, ever, forget dinner I had in Milan in the early '80's. I was invited to a friends flat and his wife served a chicken roasted with fresh rosemary and small potatoes all around. The potatoes roasted in the rosemary flaovred chicken fat. No doubt, the chicken had probably been killed the day before. This is one of my most memorable meals. Simplicity and great ingredients.

I made this twice: once using a preheated cast iron skilled and once using a regular roasting pan. The preheated cast iron made a world of difference, transforming the chicken from ordinary to sublime.

For smoke control: try starting at 450, then when (after ten or fifteen minutes) it gets a little too aromatic moving it down to 425; if it's still threatening smoke, then, down to 400.

No need to disconnect the smoke detectors. To the recipe, just add an equal number of shower caps to the number of smoke detectors.

I put a tiny rack in the roasting pan and everything was just fine. Big bunch of fresh herbs: sage, rosemary, thyme, parsley, oregano and a few chopped shallots. Added a little water to the pan--my chicken held most of its juices--when the oven started to smoke. Very nicely done free range, local bird, cooked so perfectly during resting one of the drumsticks fell off. Followed one of Ms. Clark's serving suggestions: made a bed of mustard spinach tossed in sherry vinegar and salted. Mmm good.

There's no question that this simple approach results in a great bird, and I would always cook a bird at high heat using a variant of this method if it were not for the smoke. Almost any oven I've used to roast chicken at 450--and even 400--results in a lot of smoke. And worse, because my current oven is not self-cleaning--it is a 1986 vintage small commercial oven--I get smoke when using the oven subsequently, until I clean it.