Dinner

Roast Chicken and Potatoes in One Tin

One bird, one tin, and potatoes that cook in what drips out of it.

15 minprep

80 mincook

4servings

A whole roast chicken browned all over, sitting in a dish of roast potato wedges

Make it when

you want one tin, a proper dinner, and cold chicken for two more meals

Skip it if

you need to eat within the hour — the resting alone takes twenty minutes

A whole chicken asks for fifteen minutes at the start and then leaves you alone for an hour and a half. The potatoes go underneath so they cook in what runs out of it, which is where most of the flavour on this plate comes from. What you are listening for at the end is fat still spitting in the tin — that is skin that will crackle. Then rest it properly, or the juice ends up on the board instead of in the meat.

What you buy

1 whole chicken, about 1.6 kg
1.2 kg floury potatoes, cut into large wedges
1 lemon, halved
1 head of garlic, halved across
30 g butter, softened

And from the cupboard

3 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp dried thyme

Keep the carcass. Covered with water, an onion and whatever herb stalks you have, simmered an hour, it is the stock for next week.

What you do

Heat the oven to 200°C fan. Pat the chicken dry all over, rub it with the butter, 1 tsp of the salt and the pepper, and sit the halved lemon and garlic inside it.
Toss the potatoes with the oil, the thyme and the rest of the salt, and spread them over the base of a roasting tin in one layer.
Sit the chicken straight on top of the potatoes, breast up. Roast 1 hour 20 minutes, turning the potatoes once at the hour, until the juices from the thigh run clear.
Lift the chicken onto a board and leave it twenty minutes. Put the potatoes back in the oven while it rests if they want more colour, and squeeze the roasted lemon over them.

Three things that decide it

The potatoes go UNDER the bird, not around it. Everything that renders out of the skin lands on them, and that is most of the seasoning they get.
Dry skin, then fat and salt. Anything wet on the skin steams before it browns — pat it, and leave it uncovered in the fridge if you have the time.
Rest it twenty minutes. Carving straight out of the oven pushes the juice onto the board rather than leaving it in the meat.

If you have not got it

Whole chicken: Two whole legs, roasted 50 minutes. Same method, a third of the time, and no carving.
Floury potatoes: New potatoes, halved. They will not fluff inside, but they hold their shape and catch at the edges.
Butter: Another tablespoon of oil. The skin browns just as well, a little less deeply.
Dried thyme: Rosemary chopped fine, or oregano. Anything woody survives eighty minutes; parsley does not.

Ahead, and afterwards

Salt the bird and leave it uncovered in the fridge a day ahead if you can — it dries the skin, and that is the single biggest improvement available here. Cooked, take the meat off the bone and it keeps three days in the fridge; it freezes two months in its own juices. The potatoes do not freeze, they go grainy.

If it went wrong

The skin was pale and soft: Wet skin, or a tin packed to the edges. Pat the bird dry and use a tin big enough that the potatoes sit in one layer with room around them.
The breast was dry by the time the legs were done: The chicken went in fridge-cold. Take it out thirty minutes before, and check at an hour and ten rather than trusting the clock.
The potatoes steamed instead of roasting: Too many for the tin. They need to touch the base, not each other — two tins beats one deep layer.

Three ways to change it

Lemon and garlic

A second head of garlic halved and buried in the potatoes, and both lemon halves squeezed over the tin at the end.

Paprika

Two teaspoons of smoked paprika worked into the butter. It colours the skin early, so look at it on the hour.

Under the skin

Butter mashed with chopped thyme and lemon zest, pushed under the breast skin before it goes in.

Questions people ask

Do I need to truss the chicken?

No. Trussing holds the legs against the body and slows them down, which is the opposite of what you want when the breast is the part that dries out. Left open, the legs finish closer to the breast.

How do I know when it is cooked?

Push a knife into the thickest part of the thigh, close to the bone. The juice should run clear with no pink in it. With a thermometer, 74°C in the thigh, not the breast.

Can I roast it from frozen?

No. It has to be thawed through, or the outside is finished long before the middle is safe to eat. A 1.6 kg bird wants about a day in the fridge.

Cooking it for a different number

Written for 4. For two, halve the 1 whole chicken and leave the seasonings as they are — they scale badly by arithmetic and well by taste. For six or more, add half again rather than double, and use two trays or two pans instead of crowding one.

Or change the number once and let the shopping list follow. That is the one bit of this a person should never do by hand.