Roast Chicken (Kerry's Thanksgiving Chicken)
This recipe makes a beautiful golden brown, moist and flavorful chicken that can be an entree on its own or broken down, chopped, or shredded to add into your creamy chicken condensed soup, chicken and broccoli casserole, chicken tacos, or whatever else you can think of!
Equipment
- oven
- baking dish with sides
Ingredients
- 1 Fresh Whole Chicken
- ΒΌ cup melted coconut oil
- 2 tbsp favorite dried herbs/seasoning I prefer a lot of crushed Rosemary with this chicken, and almost always add in some garlic powder, as well as salt and pepper to taste.
- 1 lemon (halved)
Instructions
- Once you remove your fresh chicken from its packaging make sure you remove the packet from the inside the cavity of the chicken and discard
- pat your chicken dry (I even dry the inside cavity as much as I can)
- melt your coconut oil and add in most of your dry seasoning mix, reserve some seasoning to add to the inside of your chicken
- using your hand gently separate the skin from the breast of the chicken to create a pocket to hold your seasoning and oil mixture. Try and make as large of a pocket as you can without ripping the skin
- pour in the oil and seasoning mixture into the pockets you created on both chicken breasts. rub the oil and seasoning from the outside of the chicken to disperse your seasonings all over the breasts and down into the legs of the chicken.
- I like to rub a little coconut oil, salt, and pepper onto the outside of my chicken for a little extra browning and flavor!
- sprinkle into the cavity the dry seasoning that you reserved earlier
- rinse and cut your lemon in half
- add the lemon halves inside the cavity of the chicken
- 2 options here, but don't skip this step! Either tie your chicken legs together with kitchen twine. Or, use my favorite new trick that I learned off of either TikTok or Instagram reels and pierce the skin near the opening of the chicken cavity with the point of a sharp knife and push one leg through the whole you just made! This step really does help keep your chicken from drying out during the cooking process!
- Bake your chicken for 60-90 minutes, this will vary depending on oven and chicken size. I like to spin my baking sheet around every 30 minutes to ensure my chicken is browning evenly, I check the internal temp with a meat thermometer when I do this until the chicken is fully cooked (at least 165 degrees).
- This step is not mandatory, but for LOOKS, if your chicken isn't a nice beautiful golden brown when it reaches 165 degrees, switch your oven to broil for about 2 minutes to quickly brown/crisp up the outside. Set a timer, and do not walk away your chicken will brown up QUICK!