Oven-Roasted Chicken with Herbs

There’s nothing more delicious or more traditional than a Sunday dinner of juicy Oven-Roasted Chicken with lemon, sage and rosemary. Yes, it’s a mouthful… of absolute goodness! This recipe is easy to pair with any vegetable, rice or side dish.

My favorite part about this recipe is that the leftovers will carry you throughout the week on topped on a salad, paired with sides or used in a soup. Don’t forget to save the bones for chicken stock! 

Roast Chicken is an easy recipe to feed a family. It just requires a little extra time and love. Instead of a roasting pan, I use a heavy dutch-oven pot for cooking. You can even use this same recipe for a Thanksgiving turkey!

Ingredients for Oven-Roasted Chicken

Roasted Chicken is hardly a “pantry recipe” but most of the ingredients you will be familiar with. It’s an easy recipe for beginners!

Here is what you will need:

• Stick of butter at room temperature. Make sure your butter is smearable.
• 4 pound chicken, whole
• 1 lemon
• 1 onion
• Sprigs of fresh rosemary, sage and thyme. If you purchase the prepackaged herbs from the store, look for “Poultry Herbs.”
• Garlic
• Salt and pepper

How to Make Oven-Roasted Chicken

First, gather all of your ingredients. Mix the clove of minced garlic in with the room temp butter.

Remove the giblet bag from inside of the chicken. Rinse and pat the chicken dry. If you plan on making gravy or bone broth, you can save the giblet bag. Place the chicken breast side up.

Now, here’s the interesting part: smearing the butter underneath the skin of the chicken.

Pro Tip: Trust me, this step makes a massive difference in the texture of the skin. The butter works with the heat in the oven to brown and crisp up the skin. I can’t even describe the amount of flavor this gives the entire recipe.

To get the butter underneath the skin of the chicken, gently lift up the skin and place the butter inside. From the outside of the chicken, you can then help the butter distribute more evenly by smearing from the outside as well. Continue to coat the chicken in the butter.

Now, place the fresh herbs underneath the skin as well. You can experiment which sprigs you want to use – combine a sprig of sage and rosemary, or do one on each side of the chicken breast. Squeeze both halves of the lemon over the chicken and place inside the cavity. Season with salt and pepper.

If desired, place an onion, carrots, celery and/or potatoes inside and around the bird. Arrange remaining herbs around the chicken.

How to Get Crispy Chicken Skin in the Oven

Two words: Butter & Basting.

By placing the butter underneath and on top of the skin, your results yield a toasted, brown and flavorful skin.

In order to keep your chicken moist while cooking, baste regularly! During the cooking process, pull the chicken out of the oven and fill your baster with juices from the bottom of the pan and carefully baste them onto the chicken, focusing on the breasts of the bird.

Continuously incorporating its own juices keeps the flavor and moisture locked in for a delicious bird!

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Oven-Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Herbs

Yield: 6 Servings

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 3 hours

Total Time: 3 hours 15 minutes

There’s nothing more delicious or more traditional than a Sunday dinner of juicy Oven-Roasted Chicken. This recipe is easily paired with any side and uses the same recipe as your Thanksgiving Turkey!

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Ingredients

• 4 oz. good butter at room temperature
• 1 4-lb. chicken, whole
• 1 lemon, halved and seeded
• Several sprigs of sage and rosemary, or a mixture of the two
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400°.
2. Mix room temp butter and garlic in a small bowl. Smear the butter with your hands all over the bird and underneath the skin. Put the chicken breast side up in a Dutch Oven that will accommodate it with room to spare.
3. Carefully, slide herbs underneath the skin. Put the remaining herbs and onion halves inside the cavity.
4. Squeeze out both lemon halves over the bird and place inside cavity. Season with salt and pepper. 
5. Roast the chicken, basting every 20 minutes in the oven for about 3 hours, or until the internal temperature reaches 165. The bird should be golden brown all over with a crisp skin and have buttery, lemony juices of a nut-brown color in the bottom of the pan.

Recommended Products

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• Lodge 6qt Cast Iron Enamel Dutch Oven Blue

Nutrition Information

Yield 6 Serving Size 1
Amount Per Serving Calories 968 Total Fat 66g Saturated Fat 25g Trans Fat 1g Unsaturated Fat 35g Cholesterol 390mg Sodium 463mg Carbohydrates 2g Fiber 1g Sugar 0g Protein 87g

The nutritional information is provided as a courtesy and is an estimate generated by a calculator.