Perfect roast chicken from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook (page 130) by Ina Garten

  • whole chicken
  • garlic
  • thyme
  • chicken stock
  • Spanish onions

  • EYB Comments

    See recipe for suggested roasted vegetables accompaniment.

Where’s the full recipe - why can I only see the ingredients?

Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

  • Eat Your Books

    See recipe for suggested roasted vegetables accompaniment.

  • cadfael on July 29, 2022

    VERY GOOD

  • jay.moe on October 15, 2021

    This is the perfect roast chicken. My chicken was just over 5 pounds and cooked in 80 minutes. I used a smaller roasting pan so the onions wouldn't burn and poured a little chicken broth over the chicken after an hour. I didn't add potatoes or carrots to the pan this time, but from past experience cooking potatoes and carrots for 90 minutes in a hot oven makes very mushy vegetables. Adding them to the pan for the last 45 minutes is long enough for them to cook. The gravy made with pan drippings and chicken stock is delicious. This is a winner with very little effort.

  • anya_sf on January 09, 2020

    My chicken weighed 4.5 lbs and took 1 hr 20 min to roast. I put the chicken on top of the onions in order to elevate the chicken and protect the onions, but they burned, so I couldn't deglaze the pan. I made the gravy in a separate pan using the drippings. The chicken was very good - not sure if the butter and garlic added anything. The gravy was okay, but perhaps would have been better if the onions hadn't burned.

  • mharriman on January 12, 2019

    Wonderful. We usually don’t like gravy at our house, and I usually don’t make it, but decided to follow the full recipe and am glad I did. The gravy was lovely— not to heavy, not to thin, nice texture and flavor, and no lumps. Definitely will repeat.

  • chawkins on November 07, 2018

    This was quite tasty for the effort put in. The recipe from the book adds only yellow onions to roast along with the chicken, but the photograph there showed carrots. Since we just harvest a bunch of carrots from the garden, I added couple of them to the pan. My thyme is dying and there is not enough usable sprigs on it, so I used rosemary instead. I also liked the way she made gravy, very simple and no lumps.

  • rionafaith on September 09, 2017

    p. 130 -- Delicious roast chicken with gravy. The cavity is stuffed with a whole head of garlic, lemon, and a bunch of thyme, which seems slightly wasteful, but it did make for a great bird. I couldn't find my kitchen twine so I "trussed" the bird by slitting a hole in the excess skin and shoving the end of each drumstick through (a technique I picked up from some other roast chicken recipe somewhere along the line), which worked just fine. Skin was nice and crisp, and the meat was very juicy, even the breast. I didn't bother to strain the onions out of the gravy as I love caramelized onions anyway, and thought they added something extra to the gravy -- which is fantastic, by the way. Next time I will definitely have to serve this with mashed potatoes or crusty bread for all that deliciousness!

  • mamacrumbcake on July 11, 2016

    I thought I already knew everything I needed to know about roasting a chicken, until I tried this recipe. Wow! This was so good and so easy--maybe 10 minutes of effort, compared to my usual 5. This recipe makes the most delicious pan juices of any roast chicken I've ever had. You can taste a hint of the lemon and the thyme which is stuffed into the cavity. And the roasted onions, carrots, and fennel that cooked in the same pan--swoon--who needs chicken? My chicken was smaller than the recipes called for so I only cooked it for an hour at 425. It was beautifully browned, juicy, and tender. If you make this, make sure to serve something that will soak up the pan juices (rice or potatoes). The book version of this recipe differs slightly from the online version: the book version has an accompanying gravy recipe and only calls for roasting onions and carrots. The online version also adds fennel.

  • stockholm28 on August 25, 2013

    This is my "go-to" roast chicken recipe ... easy and tasty.

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Reviews about this recipe

  • Kitchn

    The real highlight might just be all those aromatics stuffed inside the chicken, which make for meat that's tender, juicy, well-seasoned, and infused with just the right amount of subtle fragrance.

    Full review