Oven Roasted Whole Chicken

How to cook a whole roasted chicken in the oven to get that crispy skin but a moist, flavor-packed chicken for that family meal any day of the week.

Oven roasted whole chicken not only makes for a great Sunday dinner but makes a great bone broth. I like to utilize as much of the chicken as I can by making homemade bone broth in my Instant Pot.

Cooking A Whole Chicken In An Oven

You have probably seen some great sale prices on whole chickens when you were at the grocery store, right? Let's face it cooking a whole chicken can be kind of intimidating just like cooking a whole turkey.

No worries I'm here to walk you through the steps to roasting a whole chicken in the oven. Now go grab one of those deals on a whole chicken and a bottle of your favorite white wine. Pour yourself a glass of that wine and pull up My Creative Manner on your phone so we can walk you through roasting a whole chicken.

Step 1~ preheat the oven! In order to get that bird roasting properly, you will need to have the oven up to temperature when you place the chicken in to bake.

Step 2~ Cleaning the chicken. I normally do this in my kitchen sink. Our local grocery store has the chicken sealed up pretty tightly with some juices in there.

Sometimes when cutting the bag open the juices from the chicken will go everywhere. That is why I like to have it in the kitchen sink when I open it. If you are like me and worry about cross-contaminating you might want to check out my post on Oven Baked Chicken Fajitas where I talk about chicken handling.

Once I have the chicken out of the sealed package, I check the inside of the chicken. Sometimes there might be giblets, a bag filled with the giblets are often common in my store brand.

Or even the neck might even be inside the chicken. Clean that out and rinse it out with cold water. When you have the inside all cleaned go ahead and use paper towels to pat the chicken dry.

How To Get Crispy Skin

Step 3~ Prep your baking dish. To help keep the bottom of the chicken from sticking to the baking dish. I will add a couple of carrots, celery, and onion in the baking dish. Adding the carrots, celery, and onion will add to the broth flavor if you plan on making gravy from the pan drippings.

Step 4~ Place the chicken breast side up in your baking dish. I use a 9x13 baking dish but you can use whatever works for your size chicken.

Step 5~ To get that crispy skin on a roasted chicken you will need to add butter to the skin. Yup, its butter that gets you that crispiness. You can rub butter all over the chicken skin if you like, I find that placing pats of butter works. I also like to add some extra butter in the inside of the chicken as well.

Step 6~ Is seasoning the chicken, I like to keep it kind of simple. I use black pepper, seasoning salt, garlic powder, and parsley flakes. Remember the inside of the bird as well. Season the whole bird.

Step 7~ Is adding chicken broth into the baking dish, no chicken broth no worries. Sometimes I will add Chicken Flavor Better Than Bouillon to water, making sure it is all dissolved before I add it into the baking dish.

Or you can also use just water, as long as there is some kind of liquid to help add steam inside for the next step.

Final Steps

Step 8~ Would be tenting foil to cover the chicken with. All you have to do to tent the foil is cut two pieces of the same size foil. Lay them on top of each other and make a one-inch fold the long way on one side of the foil.

With the folded side up place the foil over the chicken. Make sure the foiled side isn't tight on the chicken. Tuck the sides of the foil to make sure no air will escape. Tenting the foil while roasting will help trap steam making the chicken a little more tender and moist.

Step 9~ Place the chicken into a preheated 400℉ oven for anywhere from 1 hour 30 to 2 hours or until internal temperature reaches 165 ℉. This will depend on the size of your chicken. The chicken I roasted was 6 pounds and still a little frozen so it took 2 and a half hours for mine to roast.

What I recommend is getting a good meat thermometer to check the internal temperature. The internal temperature is best taken at the thickest part of the chicken without touching the bone.

To help get that crispy skin and nicely browned skin. About halfway through the roasting process, I will remove the foil from the chicken.

Step 10~ Once the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165℉ remove it from the oven. Letting it rest for about 10 minutes helps keep the juices inside the meat.

When I do this I don't cover it back up with foil, I want that crispy skin. Covering the roasted chicken at this point will cause the skin to become soft.

Enjoy

Step 11~ Is cutting the chicken and enjoying it. Of course, roasted chicken is always best served with mashed potatoes, loaded mashed potatoes, or even baked potatoes.

Make sure you save those chicken bones. I have a great post for Instant Pot Chicken Bone Broth. This Oven Roasted Chicken recipe is a great Sunday meal.

Many Blessing from our table to yours ~ Jen

Other My Creative Manner Recipes you may enjoy are:

• Homemade Meatballs
• The Best Homemade Beef Stroganoff
• Instant Pot Whole Chicken
• Instant Pot Beef Tips