How to make a roast chicken really tasty?

[pairsinparis]

What are your tips for making a roast really good?

I usually do the chicken in a large tray with a lemon inside and butter under the skin. It's never realllllly tasty though.

Crumble a chicken stock cube onto the top, and cook it upside down . Turn it the right way up for crisping the skin.

Take 2 carrots, 2 celery sticks and an onion. Peel the carrots and chop them and the celery into chunks. Peel the onion and quarter it. Pop these in the bottom of the roasting tin along with some herbs. Make up a small amount of chicken stock (you want about 1cm deep in the base of the roasting tin) and pour it on top of the veg.
Pat your chicken dry with kitchen towel and rub with some oil. Season with salt and pepper. Cut a lemon in half and pop both halves into the chicken along with some herbs and some peeled garlic cloves.
Pop the chicken on top of the veg and cook according to Delias method.
Amazing chicken every time

Seasoning is. What I use if I want flavour
Eg. Peri peri salt or sticky chicken (I buy this is a local butcher in a grinder - it's lovely)

The key is in the chicken. Get the most free range corn fed one you can

I agree with the taste of the chicken really relies on the freshness and quality of the chicken.

Lemon inside the cavity
Butter under the skin
Spray oil on top of the skin, with Sage and Thyme and a few garlic granules sprinkled on.

Tastes amazing

If you aren’t using salt that’s probably the problem.

Also - garlic, herbs - in the cavity and scattered in roasting tray for your gravy later. I normally use a drizzle of olive oil over top as well as some butter - but I don’t put butter under skin, I know some people swear by it but I think it doesn’t achieve much more than plonking it on top.

Good quality chicken if you can afford it.

We're having roast chicken today. I buy the ones you roast in a bag and think it makes a real difference.

Any nice veg ideas to go with? Bored of our usual broccoli/carrots/peas

Half a lemon in the cavity. Hot oven, olive oil and salt on skin. 8-10 garlic cloves dotted around the chicken. Half way through cooking time add a glass of white wine to the roasting tray.

A good chicken.
I use butter on or under the skin, salt and pepper.
Lemon and herbs or onion in the body cavity.
Trivet of beg underneath works well .
First half of roasting time breast down .

A really good quality free range chicken

We buy our chicken from a local farm shop, it is reared on the premises and the flavour is similar to chickens of old, it is very expensive, but a bit like the MN chicken we get four meals out of it,) there are only three of us) the roast, stirfry, stirfry for the freezer or sandwiches and then DH reduces the bones to stock and we then get a risotto. In the end money well spent.

Best chicken you can afford, bulb of garlic, lemon, bunch of parsley in the cavity, olive oil and salt and pepper on the skin.

Roast on a veg trivet, I use celery, carrot and onion

firesidefox roasted veg and new potatoes are lovely with roast chicken

@nearlyspringyay

Best chicken you can afford, bulb of garlic, lemon, bunch of parsley in the cavity, olive oil and salt and pepper on the skin.

Roast on a veg trivet, I use celery, carrot and onion

Do you just put the bulb up there as it is?

Don't buy a £5 lidl chicken. Eat less meat and buy the best you can afford. Organic if possible. If I ate meat I'd rather only eat it once a week and buy quality than eat cheap meat everyday
The taste difference is immediately obvious.

Herbs, lemon inside, garlic, butter inside the skin then butter and salt on top. Good quality chicken, baste then let crisp up.

Lemon inside. Bacon on top.

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

Don't buy a £5 lidl chicken. Eat less meat and buy the best you can afford. Organic if possible. If I ate meat I'd rather only eat it once a week and buy quality than eat cheap meat everyday The taste difference is immediately obvious.

This.

Definitely eat less and buy better.

Chicken salt rubbed into the skin

They key is the chicken, as others have said. We've had a few from a specialist retailer lately that cost around £12-£15 and the difference is astounding. They genuinely don't need much help to taste amazing. I just use a bit of oil, salt and pepper, baste a couple of times. They taste like the chicken from my childhood (we kept our own, completely free-range).

They also make great stock after all the meat's been stripped off.

Salt. Butter smeared all over the TOP of the skin. As many halved lemons you can stuff inside. Salt in the cavity and lots of it. Maldon sea salt. Salt on top of the butter. Lots of it.
Salt salt salt.
High heat oven
Salt lemon and butter should caramelise nicely in the tin. Baste as you go.
Once ready squeeze out lemon juice into tin. Remove chicken. Pour in a bit of water and deglaze tin. Delicious gravy.

Agree with PPs who say free range if you can, even organic if it's in your budget. I had to do an elimination diet to reduce migraines & it turns out that non-organic meat, eggs & dairy are a trigger (IDK why, I'm not a doctor). I just eat a lot less meat now as it's damned expensive. DH commented the other day that the roast chicken we'd got was unusually tasty - of course it was, it was organic. (And on special offer haha!)

As others have said buy a really good quality, free range chicken. A £4.50 bird won't do it, they either taste of cotton wool or nothing at all.
With a really good chicken you can us very little, just some salt and pepper, butter rubbed into the skin with more in the body cavity plus some lemon juice and half a lemon.

It helps to give the lemon half a blast in the microwave first as you don't have to wait for it to heat up , you just hit the ground running.

Agree with a good quality chicken, I also slow roast at 150 for three hours or so. Imo the slow roasting makes the most difference to the taste. I just add butter, salt, pepper and herbs.