Simple Roast Chicken

Chef Thomas Keller’s food is known for fine dining finesse, but his recipe for simple roast chicken is about as easy as it gets. For Keller, the perfect roast chicken doesn’t require a lot of extra ingredients—just some kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and fresh thyme (and the thyme is optional). Instead, it gets its wonderful flavor and crispy skin from a few simple but essential steps: using a pasture-raised whole chicken (which will have more flavorful meat than a conventionally raised bird), drying the skin thoroughly, salting both the skin and the cavity of the chicken, trussing the chicken with kitchen twine so that the breast meat doesn’t dry out, and roasting at a pretty high temperature without basting. It’s such a simple meal that any home cook can make on a weeknight, along with a side of roast vegetables or a quick salad.

A good roasting pan (or even a large cast-iron skillet) will help make this easy roast chicken recipe even simpler to execute. Instead of relying on just the suggested cooking time, you’ll want to use a reliable instant-read thermometer to check the internal temperature of the thickest part of the meat (the thigh) and the breast. You can take the chicken out of the oven when the breast is around 155°—the temperature will go up about 10° as you let the chicken rest. Dark meat is safe when the meat thermometer reads 165° but more tender between 175° and 190°. Get a heavy-duty cutting board (the kind that catches the meat’s juices when you cut into the bird) ready for carving—feel free to decorate it with a few pretty thyme sprigs or whatever fresh herbs you have on hand.

This recipe was adapted for style from ‘Bouchon’ by Thomas Keller. Buy the full book on Amazon.