How to make a really good roast chicken dinner

[Spinnymop]

I'm an ok cook when it comes to soups, pasta, stir fries, and curries but my roast dinners are quite bland and boring. If you make a really show stopping roast dinner, please share your secrets and save me from dry chicken and boiled vegetables.

Use a meat thermometer to determine if the chicken is cooked. Use timings as a guide only. Cooking times vary according to the exact make up of the bird and your particular oven.

A slow grown higher welfare bird will taste a lot better than a quick grown low movement bird.

Use flavourings.... butter, hens, lemons, spices... whatever you like.

Season your veg!

Beef dripping makes excellent roast potatoes.

Squeeze a lemon over the chicken then put it in the cavity. Rub the chicken with butter, garlic and herbs....cook with foil over for about half the cooking time, the without for the other half to brown and crisp.

Agree to cooking the roast potatoes around it. They soak up the juices.

Halved lemon inside the chicken- the steam from it keeps it moist I guess. I have compared with and without.
Decent bird and not overcooking too, but the lemon is the thing.

Salt and butter in the mash.
If you don't make your own gravy which I don't then Bisto Best is the best instant one

I brush my chicken before roasting with garlic and parsley butter, left over from making garlic bread. Keep it in a small plastic box in the freezer, just chip off a chunk and melt in the microwave.

Always proper gravy, made in the roasting tin, and loads of crispy roast potatoes, which are parboiled and put in round the chicken only about half an hour before it comes out.

I time the chicken for 30 mins before we’re going to eat - it keeps hot perfectly well, and carves better. That gives plenty of time for making gravy (I decant into a small saucepan), making sure the spuds (moved to a different pan after taking chicken out) are nicely crispy (turn oven up a bit if needed) and cooking any veg on the hob.

Not nearly such a faff as it sounds!

Lemon up its arse, couple of big lumps of butter in the roasting tin, salt, pepper and lemon zest if you're feeling fancy on the top, cover with foil.

Remove the foil for the last half hour, baste and you should get a crispy skin.

Roasties take the same length of time to prep and cook as the meat - by the time you've peeled, parboiled, drained for ever, shaken so they're floofy, and ovened, they take a fucking age. But they are the best bit.

Always serve with cauliflower cheese. I didn't once and my god, the outrage 😂