Well, he clearly has no issue with saturated fat! His techniques are interesting but I won't be adopting them any time soon. I don't see economy of motion. I see a lot of unnecessary steps. I roast whole chickens frequently, at least once a month. He starts by removing the wishbone. Pulling the wishbone is an important ritual for us so that's not happening. Then he trusses the bird. Ours come trussed from the farm and I always remove the string. For health reasons I do not add butter at all unless it's for a very special occasion. Frying the bird repeatedly means one needs to be on hand constantly rather than being able to put the bird in the oven and forget it. I always start it on its back and turn it over just once during cooking. And frying always greases up the stove and stinks out the kitchen. I try to avoid it. His food hygiene is worrying. The butter dish sits next to raw meat. He handled the dish and knife with chickeny hands. He handled the salt grinder with the same hands. As to the carving, or perhaps I'd call it dismemberment, we always carve at the table and serve the meat in slices, not gobbits. And we don't do it with our bare hands. On the whole his method may be delicious but seems to me to be messy, unhygienic and unhealthy. His gravy is complicated and seems to be basically chicken flavoured melted butter. But its certainly interesting.

One of mine - a fraction of the effort and delicious.

Ps he also must have a huge oven to fit that big frying pan in it.

I have a book my folks gave me when I was very young where he uses a bunch of pictures to show how he debones a whole chicken. When I started roasting chickens, however, I was more trying to make chicken like my mother. She used an X-rack to roast two at a time. I tried, I think, a v-rack, then a ceramic "beer can" dish which made great chicken, but cracked down the middle on third use, and its replacement only lasted one. That oven was very wonky, and perhaps it was the highly uneven temperature that did them in. A vertical wire chicken stand--same concept more or less--worked okay but without the thermal mass of the ceramic, wasn't special and needed fussing with, turning and whatnot, but was the best that old oven could do.

New kitchen, excellent oven, experimented with two at a time on the rotisserie. Great results but a huge mess. Got a second vertical wire, and just stood them on one of the oven's enameled, raised sided, sheet pans (which could do at least five) and poured wine in a thin layer rather than a well, and in the total excellence, the chickens were as good as they'd been in the ceramic. Yay! much much less mess than the rotisserie, much less work, same result. But, while one of my lessons from my mother was it takes no more to roast two chickens as one, and freeze for later, I found myself with a lot more cooking time at home, and didn't really need the frozen chicken. And I had the steam oven at this point. So I tried butterflying a chicken (young ones open out without spatchcocking) and laying it atop a bed of onion slices, baby carrots, and anything that caught my eye, with some sauce (anything with some fat and sugar in it) and seasoning on the skin. Magic! That has been my go-to for a single chicken ever since. I never did get around to JP's deboning ritual, esp. since learning that the bones add to the flavor.

Lovely dinner spread, floral !

Another great video from Jacques, what a treasure that man is !

His wife was a lucky woman

Just tonight I cooked a Richard Olney chicken recipe where you brown chicken legs in butter, layer said legs in a casserole with lemon... meantime, simmer many garlic cloves in chicken broth and deglaze the pan with that , pour that broth, garlic cloves and all, over the layered legs and bake . Richard's words, 'the sauce must be tasted to be believed' held true tonight.

As for deboning, the only thing I’ve done is spatchcock for grilling. For roasting, it’s usually a whole chicken or something sheetpan with chicken parts (bone-in or boneless). We tend to grill chicken the most. DH does enjoy a whole roasted bird, and I’ve found Ina G’s recipe to be very good.

Some years ago I asked a butcher to remove the backbone. He went through three chickens before getting it right.😵‍💫

Wow! I sometimes ask the butcher to do it and the part they get wrong if you don't nag is cutting round leg style rather than cutting the pelvis from the spine. They're used to that so they can upcharge on the "oysters". Since my spines are going in the stock, that's not the right thing. Was that the issue? I have poultry shears, now, which can cut through the pelvis of the smaller chickens I prefer, so I mostly do my own.

I remember watching Pepin's instruction for deboning and roasting when he had his TV shows. I did learn how to tuck the wings from him as well.

For years now, I use a boning knife to split birds down one side of the backbone and flatten to roast - 400F for around 55 minutes or so. I like that the back skin gets crisp and browned that way, and it cooks more evenly too, it seems. The breast doesn't dry out as much when it's kind of squished together.

The crunchy, oily tail is my treat when it comes out of the oven 🙂

He makes removing the wishbone look easy - I might try that, because it is a nuisance to cut around after cooking, and it's intact, so you can still make a wish

There's a scene in 'The Bear' tv show where Thomas Keller shows Carmy how to take the wishbone out, it's quiet and sweet if you're into fine dining (so many scenes in The Bear involve people yelling, haha)

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1m6eq40/just_try_to_do_a_little_better_each_day_thomas/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I don't usually remember or bother to take the wishbone out myself, oops maybe that's my excuse for why I mangle the carving

My husband spatchcocks our turkeys and chickens for grilling, but I've done it differently a couple of times now for roasting where I cut through the breast bone with my large chef knife and leave the sparse but tasty back intact on the chicken ( sort of rotate the legs to 'splay' them) . it seems easier for my arthritis hands and works great .

I start it with breast side up and then flip it once to back side up, and flip again to finish . We are using our toaster oven these days, so the flattened chicken fits much better.

“Was that the issue?”

It was so long ago I don’t remember. I do remember leaving the butcher counter to continue shopping, then came back for the chicken. The (young!) butcher admitted it took him 3 tries and 3 chickens.😵‍💫 Pretty sure he had someone else do the last one.

I like my roast chicken simple. My method is simple, too -- slather it with olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe some paprika if I feel like it, throw it in the oven at 425F for 30 minutes then turn down the temp to 375F for the remainder of the cooking time (20 minutes/lb is my rule of thumb). Let rest for 30 minutes before carving. Perfect every time.

Every once in a while I'll stuff quartered lemons and a bundle of fresh thyme sprigs into the cavity but otherwise I don't stuff the chicken (those roasted lemon quarters are sooo gooood...)

My roast whole chicken is the same always. I cut the chicken at the breast. Flatten. Put on charcoal grill on cool side. Flip occasionally. No oil, the chicken skin has enough oil. No seasonings, we salt at the table. If once in a while it is too cold to grill, I cook in oven.

I have learned to roast chicken by placing it untrussed back up first half hour and then breast up for last half hour or so. I baste during change over. I do place butter under the breast skin to which I sometimes add tarragon. Always seems to work out fine with juicy breast.

My DH does a spatchcock method with lots of grilling and sprinkled with paprika and chilli flakes, it is very good but not what I would call roast chicken.

I do exactly as Neely describes but I don't add butter unless it's a very special occasion. The chickens we get have sufficient fat of their own and are not dry. Very simple. Very tasty.

I love roast chicken but because I live alone, I seldom cook them any more. I try to prepare something that takes a little more effort for guests (most of whom are good cooks and roast their own chickens), so a whole roast chicken is too much food for me. I don't love it left over or frozen after cooking. When I do roast one, I buy a local grown organic chicken from the farmer's market or a Rosie's Organic chicken from my food coop. Both are so much better than factory farm chickens. I have spatchocked many and cooked on the grill, but usually do them in the oven now. One of my friends made the BEST roast chicken I'd ever had and so now I follow her method. She stuffs the cavity with as much fresh parsley as can be crammed into it. And I mean crammed! She sprinkles the outside with Lawry's seasoned salt and roasts at 375f for about 1.25 hours depending on size of chicken. The parsley steams it from the inside out, yet lets the skin get nice and crispy. It turns out so moist and flavorful, I really love it.

I can't recall ever deboning a whole chicken, but I have deboned turkeys several times. One year I had guests for Thanksgiving and removed the bones before reforming it over stuffing/dressing so it looked like an intact bird. (I left the bones in the legs and wings). It was in the oven long before the guests arrived so they had no idea.

When it had rested and I was ready to carve it, I sliced right through where there should have been the carcass and I'll never forget the look on the face of one of my friends who was helping me get the food on the table. He looked incredulous, assuming that the bones had disintegrated during cooking, I guess! He just couldn't believe it! It was a lovely way to carve and serve it. Quite the conversation piece for all the guests. It wasn't difficult to figure out how to remove the bones and was before the internet, so maybe there was an article in Bon Appetite or something. I don't recall where I even got the idea.

Oh, I LOVE Jacques Pepin and we used his instructions to bone and roll a turkey once, but I've never done a chicken.

Since we raise our own meat birds I always make sure I keep several for roasting whole, that's more than one meal for Elery and I. I brine mine overnight, pat it dry, stuff it full of fresh herbs, rub on some seasonings which depend on the day and what I want. I do tie the legs and tuck the wings. Place it on a rack in a roasting pan and roast at 375F for about an hour and a half. My birds weigh about 5-6 pounds dressed, so time depends on size. I've never needed to add butter or oil, but I don't see why someone else shouldn't, I don't eat chicken skin so could not care less about crunchy or whatever. Mine still come out nicely browned with crunchy skin which just makes it easy for me to peel it off, LOL.

Annie

If I'm not doing Lar's Algerian Roasted Chicken, I stuff my chicken with an onion and a halved lemon and then pop it into the oven. I use a meat thermometer so it's always moist. We have the roast hot for dinner and then the rest of the chicken is used as cold sliced chicken, chicken sandwiches, chicken nachos, chicken Caesar salad, whatever, and then the carcass goes into the freezer until I have 3 or 4 and then they go into the crockpot to make stock.

DH and I were gobsmacked the other day when I read a Reddit post where a woman was complaining that as she found cooking a meal every night for her family "exhausting", she decided to cook two roasts and roasted vegetables to meal prep so she had minimal cooking for a couple of days. She apparently was up "all night" cooking the roasts (????) and was so tired she went for a nap. When she woke up she was furious to find that her not so DH and children had eaten some of the food and given the rest away to DH's sister. Now, I get the anger for giving the food away without consulting his wife (did it not occur to him to wonder why there was so much food?), but we could not understand why cooking a roast was so "exhausting". To us (and a friend at work I was discussing this with), a roast is pretty well minimum effort cooking: you put it all in the oven and then go and sit down until the thermometer beeps.

So many ways to roast a chicken. Here is one that is very interesting to try. A roasted stuffed chicken. I mean a true stuffed chicken, not a chicken used to make dressing.

The concept is simple, the execution takes patience. you need to remove all the bones without cutting the skin. (tunnel deboning).

This one I made was worth the trouble. A roasted chicken stuffed with chestnut stuffing.

i have a few requests to make it again for Thanksgiving.

dcarch

dcarch, that’s beautiful! A really cool idea. Chestnut stuffing is so holiday-right!

Roasted a chicken today. Removed the wishbone, trussed, stuffed with scallions and oranges, browned in butter and roasted in the cast iron pan, turning to a new side every twenty minutes, just like M. Pepin said. It was good! DD was complimentary. Good in a simple, cleanly flavored, back to basics way. I am pleased.

"Good in a simple, cleanly flavored, back to basics way. I am pleased."

Yes, that's how I like my roast chicken :0) Stuffing with oranges sounds good, I should try that instead of the lemons.

"There's a scene in 'The Bear' tv show" . . . that is a lovely scene. SWMBO is binging "The Bear" now. I'll tell her to look out for that scene.

Oh, that sounds good, John.

Right now I have some beef thawing for bulgogi, but I'm going to have to thaw one of those chickens, I think.

Annie

What a faff. The whole world eats delicious roast chicken. I think it's the most popular meat on the planet. Why make such an unnecessary fuss? It must be one of the first thing most people learn to cook as it's so simple and delicious.