You can’t wrong with a roast chicken on a Sunday afternoon in my opinion, and my version is dead easy and so delicious. I always buy a large chicken so I have some meat left over and then use that for a quick meal on Monday. If you would like any left over chicken recipes please let me know in the comments section.

Ingredients

• Free-range whole chicken
• 1 lemon
• unsalted butter
• Thyme
• Salt and pepper
• White onion
• Carrot

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200ºc.

If you are unsure of cooking times for your chicken, I always use this handy roast timer  you just put in the weight of any meat and it tells you how to long to cook it for. I always put mine in for 20 minutes on 200ºc and then turn the temperate down to 180ºc. This ensures you get crispy skin and soft tender meat.

The next step is to grate the zest of a large lemon into a bowl, along with a tablespoon of room temperate butter, a few sprigs of thyme and salt and pepper. Mix these these together to form a paste.

Under the back of the chicken you need to insert a spoon under the skin very gently, this pries the meat away from the skin, you need to do this to both breasts and then insert some of the butter under the skin with a spoon, and push it all the way up the breast. This ensures your meat stays juicy. Rub the leftover butter mixture on top of the skin of the whole bird. Then cut your lemon which you zest earlier  in half and insert this inside the chicken.

Next, chop a whole white onion into 1 cm circles, along with strips of carrot and lay this on the bottom of your roasting tray. Rest the chicken on top, and add 1cm of water to the bottom of the roasting tray.

Follow the times from the roast timer and I always baste my chicken every 30 minutes to ensure the mean stays tender and doesn’t go dry. Just remember to get your chicken out of the oven at least 10 minutes before you are ready to serve so it can rest.

Enjoy x