Roasting Help: Multiple chickens at once Xpost from HD Discussions

1929Spanish-GW

7 years ago

As part of my Italian Christmas dinner, I'm roasting several chickens in my 30" oven. I know....this is the one day of the year I wish I had a larger range....

I think I'll need to roast four so I'll have two and two in aluminum pans sitting on cookie sheets, take out the middle shelf and have one pan in the top and the other on the bottom. I'll shift their location mid way through.

Im not a frequent roaster. Can this be done successfully? Have you done it successfully? If so, should I consider the roasting time to be the sum of the chicken weight? Would it be better to roast with convection?

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Comments (2)

plllog
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
Yes, this can be done successfully. What you've said should work if you're careful and keep an eye on things.

Do you have convection? I'm assuming yes, from your question, but it's not 100% clear. If so, if you're doing multiple levels and have heated convection, I wouldn't do the "roast" (bottom heat) heat part. Just the convection. That could alter your timing, but the cooking would be a lot more even.

The main thing to keep in mind is that the heat will reflect off the upper tray so the lower will probably cook faster. I might cook at a lower temperature, like 325° F until they're just about at serving temp (cooked through), then raise it for browning.

You might find that the chickens fit better and cook more evenly if you butterfly (or spatchcock, i.e., removed the spine, flatten and possibly remove the breastbone)-- you should be able to still fit two per level that way and they'll cook more evenly flat. Tuck the wing tips under no matter how you do it.

Alternatively, if you want to invest $25 in four wire stands, you could make them all on one level, standing up. This is especially good if you have convection, because you'd have to do a minimal amount of rearranging, and that one you could use the roast (bottom) heat as well, and they're all on one level so you don't have that reflecting thing from the upper pan. I'm pretty sure I've done three, two for sure, this way, and I know the oven had room for a fourth.

Just keep your thermometer handy, and remember to check the breasts as well as the thighs.

One other way to do it, if you don't have to present the birds, is to portion them first, and roast the pieces in big pans. That's the easiest because you can separated the pieces by size and not have to overcook the wings to get the thighs done to the bone.
biondanonima (Zone 7a Hudson Valley)
7 years ago
This will work fine, but you may need to rotate more than once to make sure they roast evenly. I would probably use convection just to increase air circulation given the mass of the items in the oven. You will probably need to lengthen the cooking time SLIGHTLY from what it would be for one chicken, but not a lot (and certainly not 4x). Is there a reason the chickens need to stay whole? You may get better results faster if you spatchcock them or roast parts rather than whole chickens.
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Roasting Help: Multiple chickens at once Xpost from HD Discussions

Comments (2)

plllog

biondanonima (Zone 7a Hudson Valley)

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