Lazy Roast Chicken (Cold Start Method)

There are several paths to the best roast chicken. You can dry brine it and then spatchcock it or squeeze it and sear the legs before roasting. Each of these elements contributes to achieving the gold standard of roast chicken, a standard that makes even the ghost of Paul Bocuse beam with pride.

Now I’ll let you in on a little secret: I rarely do all of this.

Like many people, I have a busy life. I have a family to feed and I don’t have time to optimize every last dinner that arrives at my table. The “best” roast chicken is rarely in my sights, and that’s okay with me. The truth is, for all the attention that has ever been given to roasting the perfect chicken, it’s actually one of the easiest recipes to make with almost no effort. Unlike the practiced technique required for a good French omelette or the layered complexity of a good braise like beef bourguignon, you can get 95 percent of the way to roast chicken excellence by doing little more than salting the bird and tossing it in the oven. The result may not reach the level of a 3-star restaurant, but it will come surprisingly close.

Most of the time when I roast a chicken at home, I dry it, rub it with a little oil, salt it all over inside and out, and put it in a cold oven. Then I turn on the heat, usually to a fiery 425°F, and let it roll until cooked (I often do this on a rimmed quarter sheet in my countertop toaster oven, which heats faster than a standard oven.) It’s always a marvel: the skin golden and crisp, the meat juicy and flavorful. This is one of the simplest and best dinners.

The method is so simple that it barely requires a recipe, but I have one below in case it’s helpful. What’s really important, however, is understanding a few key culinary concepts that guarantee success:

• The skin must be dry. Water has a relatively low boiling point of 212°F and it requires a lot of energy to cook. If you put a wet bird in the oven, you’ll waste valuable time simply evaporating moisture from the surface, while delaying the browning and crisping reactions that don’t really begin until the chicken skin is dehydrated. Patting the bird dry with paper towels reduces this drying time, resulting in a more golden bird in the end.
• The skin needs to be oiled. There are several reasons to rub the bird with oil. First, since you have just dried the skin, the salt will stick to it less well. A burst of fat helps the salt stick. Additionally, the oil helps transfer heat from the oven to the skin, creating a micro-frying environment. In my turkey skin processing tests, the benefit of rubbing with fat was obvious; the same goes for chicken.
• We have to salt it all. Here’s something I wish more home cooks would take to heart: If you salt an ingredient correctly, you’re really not doing it well. need to add something else. Salt is so important. Additional flavorings can make a dish much more interesting, but salt alone is enough to make it delicious. If you season the bird all over, inside and out, with enough salt, but not too much, you’ve done the most crucial thing in terms of flavor. Everything after that is just gravy.
• Cold start for victory. Breaking with the common practice of preheating the oven, I put my chicken in a cold oven and let them heat together. This is more efficient because you don’t have to wait for the oven to heat up before cooking the chicken. Second, it gives you extra drying time for the skin at a lower heat, which can only help make the skin crispier and browner. Third, it slightly mimics reverse searing, in which a roast starts at a lower temperature to cook more gently and evenly, then finishes at a higher temperature to achieve a good sear on the outside. Depending on how quickly your oven heats up, you may not notice much difference between a hot and cold start, but at the very least it won’t do any harm and, if anything, it will help a little. (See Leah’s article on searing chicken for another ode to cold starting.)
• High heat or bust. It’s fine to start the chicken in a cold oven, but you want it to spend most of its time over high heat, somewhere around 425°F. Chickens aren’t that big and they don’t take long to cook, which means you don’t have much time to get that coveted golden, crispy skin. If you roast at a lower temperature, you may end up with a pale, flabby bird; If you extend the cooking time to intensify the color, you risk overcooking the meat. With high heat, you’ll be more likely to get both perfect meat and well-roasted skin.
• Use a thermometer. To get a perfect chicken, you have to take it out of the oven at the right time, and the best way to do this is to have a good thermometer. There’s a lot of confusion about what temperature you should cook chicken to, with many insisting that the official USDA number of 165°F is necessary for safe, salmonella-free meat. But the truth is more complicated than that. Official guidelines are designed to avoid error: at 165°F, it’s instant death for harmful bacteria. But you can safely cook chicken to a lower internal temperature, like 150°F, as long as all the meat stays at or above that temperature for at least a few minutes. This is more or less guaranteed with a whole roast chicken, because once it hits 150°F at its coldest part, it will have enough retained heat throughout to not only maintain that temperature, but climb even higher via carryover cooking before it begins to cool. This guarantees you much juicier and tender meat, without an increased risk of foodborne illness. The only problem: you need a thermometer to be sure you’ve done it correctly.

If you do the above, the chicken will take care of the rest. Its skin and fat will self-baste as it roasts, achieving that deep, roasted color and crispy texture we all desire. The unstretched legs will open at the sides, allowing heat to penetrate more quickly and cook the dark meat more thoroughly, making it as delicious as possible. The thicker breast will come out plump, tender and glistening with juice. And you will have done all this without any effort. There is real beauty in that. Some will even say that it is perfection.