Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken
The beauty of this classic recipe from Simon Hopkinson lies in its simplicity - chicken is generously coated in butter, stuffed with herbs and garlic, seasoned well, and finished with a squeeze of lemon. The finished bird has perfectly bronzed skin, tender meat, and its buttery, lemony juices provide all the gravy you'll need. Delicious.
Ingredients
| 110g/4 oz | good butter, at room temperature |
| 1.8 kg/4 lb | free-range chicken |
| salt and pepper | |
| 1 | lemon |
| Several sprigs of | thyme or tarragon, or a mixture of the two |
| 1 | garlic clove, peeled and crushed |
Method
Preheat the oven to 450°F/230°C/Gas Mark 8. Smear the butter with your hands
all over the bird. Put the chicken in a roasting tin that will accommodate it
with room to spare. Season liberally with salt and pepper and squeeze over the
juice of the lemon. Put the herbs and garlic inside the cavity, together with the
squeezed out lemon halves – this will add a fragrant lemony flavour to the finished
dish.
Roast the chicken in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Baste, then turn the oven
temperature down to 375°F/190°C/Gas Mark 5 and roast for a further 30-45
minutes with further occasional basting. The bird should be golden brown all over
with a crisp skin and have buttery, lemony juices of a nut-brown colour in the
bottom of the tin.
Turn off the oven, leaving the door ajar, and leave the chicken to rest for at least
15 minutes before carving. This enables the flesh to relax gently, retaining the juices
in the meat and ensuring easy, trouble-free carving and a moist bird.
Carve the bird to suit yourself; I like to do it in the roasting tin. I see no point in
making a gravy in that old-fashioned English way with the roasting fat, flour and
vegetable cooking water. With this roasting method, what you end up with in the tin
is an amalgamation of butter, lemon juice and chicken juices. That’s all. It is a perfect
homogenisation of fats and liquids. All it needs is a light whisk or a stir, and you have
the most wonderful ‘gravy’ imaginable. If you wish to add extra flavour, you can
scoop the garlic and herbs out of the chicken cavity, stir them into the gravy and heat
through; strain before serving.
Another idea, popular with the Italians, is sometimes known as ‘wet-roasting’.
Pour some white wine or a little chicken stock, or both, or even just water around
the bottom of the tin at the beginning of cooking. This will produce more of a sauce
and can be enriched further to produce altogether different results. For example, you
can add chopped tomatoes, diced bacon, cream, endless different herbs, mushrooms,
spring vegetables, spices – particularly saffron and ginger – or anything else that you
fancy.
For me, the simple roast bird is the best, but it is useful to know how much further
you can go when roasting a chicken.
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