The “ultimate” Roast Chicken

The secret is a lemon, garlic and herb compound butter UNDER the skin!

all right today I’m going to show you one of my favorite roast chicken tricks we’re actually going to flavor this chicken Under the Skin with what’s called a compound butter so this is really easy to make uh you going take a half a stick of butter that’s a room temperature some fresh thyme and some fresh Rosemary few sprigs of each I got four cloves of garlic a lemon and some salt and pepper so I guess this is lemon rosemary and herb chicken all right so we’re going to take our butter we’re going to add are chopped herbs very fine I uh crushed my garlic with a press and I’m going to use this tool which is a zester okay also known as a channel knife and those little grooves on the end actually if you scrape them along an orange or a a lemon or a lime they just take off see that they just take off that yellow zest and that’s where all those Delicious lemon oils are okay you don’t want any of the white uh that’s really a bitter off flavor so if you really want to do zest the proper way you got to get a channel knife or a zester okay okay I want to dice that really really fine mince it really fine see that add that to my butter and I’m going to just go a little salt and pepper here about uh well I said little not really I’m going to do about a teaspoon of black pepper and about a teaspoon of salt and again this is going to flavor the whole chicken underneath so that’s uh there we go all right I’m going to take a spoon and because that uh butter was room temperature it should mash up nice and easy and again I don’t want this super soft okay I just want to be able to work with it and that is pretty lovely okay now here’s what we’re going to do we’re going to take our 4B chicken and again you use the size you want but the if you go by the times I’m giving you here it’s a 4B chicken I’m going to fold the wings underneath there’s nothing uglier than those little burned tips of wings that stick up God I hate that so fold those underneath actually makes for a nice base okay and then take your fingers starting from the back of the chicken towards the front towards the neck you just loosen the skin with your fingers now be careful don’t go through the the middle you want that to stay separate the two sides of the breast but if you slowly and carefully you’ll loosen that skin in fact if you have one of these silicone spatulas one of my favorite alltime kitchen tools by the way uh to get all the way to the front you can kind of gently just poke that down in okay the back of a spoon might also work and I just want to go all the way just about till there cuz what we’re going to do is we’re going to take half the butter on either side and just kind of press it in there all right so there’s half my compound butter I’m just going to stick it under the skin and I’m just going to kind of smoos it and Smash It and Pat it until it coats the whole breast and this is such a great technique I mean you see the skin on a chicken basically is watertight and if you just put all those delicious flavors on the outside they just kind of melt around and they really don’t flavor the meat as well so that’s why this technique is really really nice all right so I’m just going to make that nice and even going to sprad spread it I’m going to go give a little massage here in fact I was enjoying that a little too much all right so our flavored compound Butters in now to finish the prep here we’re going to Salt and Pepper the inside pretty well so take a nice big pinch all right and put that in the cavity I took out all the stuff that comes with the chicken the giblets and the backbone and all that stuff I’m going to Squeeze My Lemon that I Zed I’m just going to leave the lemon right inside it’s going to flavor it as it Cooks if you have any ends or scraps of the herb the stem throw those in why not and then take a little p piece of um kitchen twine and just tie up the legs okay and that’ll just keep everything together and to a nice package and that’s going to roast nice and evenly and that is ready for a 400° oven now mine cooked for just about an hour okay you probably want to go internal temperature of about 160 165 okay and now we flavored underneath the skin but before I pop it in that 4 100° oven I want to Salt and Pepper the outside too and don’t just put the spice on the top so you’re going to watch me I just rubbed a little olive oil on there by the way uh I’m going to sprinkle on the top and a lot of people stop right there turn the chicken to the side all right see all that surface area you missed all right so turn your chicken over and season the sides and season the bottom and season the other side so when you’re seasoning a chicken just don’t sprinkle on the top very common mistake all right so now our skin outside is flavored our skin inside is flavored with that amazing compound butter and this will be the juiciest most delicious chicken you’ve ever tasted now I went about 45 minutes and then I took it out I gave it a little base I checked the temperature right in fact I’ll put a link for a internal temperature uh deals for cooking your Meats just a lot easier than trying to guess and I put that back in for about 10 or 15 and when that came out it just it’s hard to describe how delicious this is all that citrus zest and butter and garlic and herbs just melt all between all the layer between the skin and the Flesh and it just flavors it from the inside out the outside was just perfectly crispy and again we did put some salt and pepper and olive oil on the outside uh this again I’m I’m going to make the claim it will be the most delicious roast chicken youve ever made and I really hope you give this technique a try uh enjoy oh I forgot to mention we’re not done tomorrow’s demo I’m going to show you how to take that uh the pan drippings that we had from the roast chicken and we’re going to make a delicious and really really flavorful uh pan gravy for this for this amazing roast chicken stay tuned