I roasted my first chicken sometime in the spring of 2002. I was 22 and living on my own for the first time in my life. I bought the chicken at Reading Terminal Market, for the extravagant price of $13 (it seemed awfully spendy at the time since I was making approximately that much an hour). When I got it home, I rinsed it with cold water, patted it down with paper towels and perched it in a battered, shallow roasting pan that I had picked up at a thrift store. Following my mother's instructions, I sprinkled the outside with salt and garlic power. Inside, I slipped a halved lemon, a sprig of rosemary and a small, roughly chunked onion.
I've only very slightly improved on this method in the last six years. These days, I slip herbs under the skin, scatter whole cloves of garlic in the pan around the bird and rub the skin with a little butter in the final half hour in order to help crisp the skin. However, I always slip that halved lemon in the cavity. Over at the Kitchn, they've tested two roasted lemon chicken methods in an attempt to find a superior method. In one they perch lemon slices over the skin of the bird and in the other they put the lemon inside. Check out the post to see what they discovered.
What's your chicken roasting technique?
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