Recipes / Main
Weeknight roast chicken with lemon and potatoes
Draft recipe — not yet cooked in this kitchen
One pan, one hot oven: the potatoes cook underneath and soak up everything the chicken gives them.
This is the roast for a Tuesday. The chicken sits straight on a bed of potatoes, so there is no rack to wash and nothing to baste. The potatoes turn soft underneath and crisp at the edges, and they pick up the lemon and the chicken fat as they go.
Dry the skin well before it goes in. That one step does more for crisp skin than anything else here.
Weeknight roast chicken with lemon and potatoes
- Serves
- 4
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 1 hr 10 min
- Total
- 1 hr 25 min
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, about 1.6 kg (3½ lb)
- 1 kg (2¼ lb) waxy potatoes, cut into 4 cm (1½ in) chunks
- 2 lemons
- 6 garlic cloves, unpeeled and lightly crushed
- 4 sprigs thyme
- 60 ml (4 tbsp) olive oil
- 2 tsp fine salt, plus more to taste
- 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Method
Heat the oven to 220°C (425°F) with a rack in the middle. Take the chicken out of the fridge while the oven heats.
Pat the chicken dry all over with paper towels, inside and out. Season it with 1½ tsp of the salt and the pepper.
In a roasting pan, toss the potatoes with 45 ml (3 tbsp) of the oil, the rest of the salt, the garlic and the thyme. Slice one lemon into thin rounds and scatter them over the potatoes.
Halve the second lemon and push both halves into the chicken. Set the chicken breast-side up on the potatoes and rub it with the last 15 ml (1 tbsp) of oil.
Roast for 55–60 minutes, until the skin is deep golden and the thickest part of the thigh reads 74°C (165°F) on a thermometer.
Lift the chicken onto a board to rest for 10 minutes. Turn the potatoes in the pan juices and put them back in the oven while the chicken rests.
Carve the chicken. Squeeze the roasted lemon halves over the meat and serve with the potatoes and the pan juices spooned over.