How to Roast a Chicken
Roasting a chicken doesn’t have to be a major production.
Inc. Street Food’s Bob McDonough talks to us about how he cooks his Springer Mountain Chicken. He tells us why he seasons the bird inside and out, and fills the cavity with some aromatic rosemary and lemons. With the inside ready, he puts butter between the breast meat and the skin to baste from the inside, before trussing his chicken and cooking it.
As a general rule, you’re going to roast a chicken for 20 minutes per pound, and add an extra 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven. So a 3lb bird will take 1 hour and 15 minutes, a 5lb bird will cook in a little less than 2 hours. The important thing is that a cooked chicken will have an internal temperature of 165 degrees, so if you have a probe thermometer, check the temperature of the fattest parts of the breast and leg, and in the “armpit” of the wing (just don’t push the probe up to the bone because it will take the temperature of the bone and not the meat).
