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Roast Chicken
1 roasting chicken Stuffing Savory fat or olive oil Salt and pepper Flour Wash, singe and draw the fowl, rub it with salt and pepper inside and out, and stuff the fowl. (Any stuffing may be used. Bread stuffing, chestnut stuffing and celery stuffing are particularly good.) Truss and tie the fowl. Grease it well with savory fat or olive oil, dredge with flour and place it on a trivet in a double roasting-pan in a hot oven (480 deg Fahrenheit), to sear quickly so that its juices may not escape during the roasting. After twenty or twenty-five minutes, when the skin is well seared, cover the pan, lessen the heat to 370 degrees and cook until the breast is tender. If cooked in an open pan, as soon as the flour has been nicely browned, baste well, adding a little fat or water if necessary, repeating the basting every ten minutes. Allow about twenty minutes to a pound for roasting. Serve with giblet sauce.
A serviceable two-stage roast: a hot sear, then a long moderate finish under cover. The instructions assume a bird you bought whole and undressed, and a cook who judged doneness by feel.
- Skip the drawing and singeingSupermarket chickens arrive plucked, drawn and pinfeather-free. Rinse only if you wish, pat thoroughly dry, and pull the giblet bag from the cavity for the sauce.
- The temperatures, as given480°F is hotter than most cooks now use for a sear; 450°F for the first 20-25 minutes does the same work with less smoke from the fat. The 370°F finish is fine as written, or round it to 375°F.
- Timing is the weak pointTwenty minutes to the pound reflects tough, mature birds. A modern 4-5 lb chicken is done in roughly 1 to 1½ hours total. Pull it when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165°F and the juices run clear; on a larger bird the old timing risks carrying it past that.
- Searing does not seal juicesThe high initial heat browns the skin and starts the flour crust, which is worth doing, but it does not trap anything inside. Judge the sear by colour, not by faith in the mechanism.
- Savory fatRendered poultry, bacon or beef drippings kept from earlier cooking. Butter, duck fat or oil all substitute directly; butter will darken faster at 450°F.
- Double roasting-panA roasting pan with a fitted cover, the ancestor of the covered roaster. A sheet of foil tented over the pan after the sear gives the same effect, though the skin softens more than it would uncovered.
- Stuffed birds need longerStuffing packed into the cavity must itself reach 165°F, which pushes the whole bird past its best. Baking the dressing in a separate dish is the reliable route; if you do stuff, temperature the stuffing as well as the thigh.
- Rest itThe recipe says nothing about resting. Fifteen minutes loosely covered before carving makes a visible difference to how much juice ends up on the board.
- YieldA 4-5 lb roasting chicken serves four to six with stuffing and sauce.