Easy Lemon Pepper Whole Roasted Chicken

Lemon Pepper Roast Chicken: Dinner Party Approved

This lemon pepper roasted chicken recipe is an easy way to meal prep for the rest of your week and make Sunday dinner. You can use the meat from this whole chicken for several different meals! The goal of this easy recipe is to get some crispy skin on your bird. It’s the best part! This recipe with simple ingredients will replace your grocery store-bought rotisserie chicken. It would be a great option for a dinner party. Think of how great a whole roasted chicken would look in the middle of your table!

Get that crispy chicken skin!

There are a few ways to make sure that your chicken skin is crispy. We find using paper towels to ensure the skin of the chicken is very dry. When cooking a whole chicken you want to ensure it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees and allow it some time to rest. You can use an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh to get an accurate reading.

I purchased two new Bluetooth thermometers. We stuck one in the thickest part of the thigh. I used the second one on the thickest part of the breast meat. This allows me to keep my oven closed while still checking the temp. These are the ones that we were gifted by a friend! They are so convenient and fun to use. Remember that cooking times will vary based on the size of your chicken and your oven. This is why any kind of meat thermometer is so important.

A roasting pan is the way to go

We use a fairly large roasting pan for our chicken. This ensures that it is not sitting on pan juices and allows for a golden brown crispy skin all over the bird. You can also use a Dutch oven or baking dish for this. Your bird may not be as crispy because it sitting in the pan drippings while cooking. We love to add some carrots, whole garlic cloves, and onion to the bottom of the pan to give the drippings a little extra flavor. We then can serve them as a side dish with our dinner.

You can also take the juices from the bottom of the pan when you are done and make gravy. Make sure to run it through a fine mesh strainer to make sure any bits of food are out of the liquid. This makes for a delicious topping for your chicken or any of the sides that you make.

Wine not!

You also have the option of adding some white wine to the pan. The alcohol will cook out but it will make your drippings extra tasty. This truly is a simple recipe but you can make it a little fancier with some tweaks. We really love recipes that are simple enough for anyone to make but can be doctored a bit to enhance them.

We tie the legs of the bird with kitchen twine to make sure all the goodies inside the cavity stay there. You can easily find this at your local grocery store but it is not going to ruin the recipe if you do not have it. I create a loop around one of the chicken legs and then loop the twine around the other leg and tie it off. You want to make sure you remove this after the chicken is out of the oven so no one is eating twine in their dinner.

No grocery store lemon pepper!

Please do not use lemon pepper seasoning from the grocery store. There are so many different additives and you have no control over the flavor. If you love lemon feel free to add more lemon juice or even some lemon zest to the recipe. We always make sure to use fresh lemon juice as well. You can cut corners by buying the juice from the grocery store but it wont be as good! If you love the flavor of black pepper you can add more to your melted butter or to the chicken cavity.

Make sure to season the inside of your chicken.

The most important part with these flavors is to ensure you are also seasoning the cavity of the chicken. Yes, I know, this is gross. Before you begin seasoning the cavity you are going to need to stick your hand in there and make sure to take out the little bag with the organs out. Some chickens might not have this but you need to check. There is no quicker way to ruin the entire meal than to leave a plastic bag in your bird.

By flavoring the outside and then the inside you are ensuring a juicy chicken and extra flavor! You can also choose to add fresh herbs like fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, or parsley. We love the lemon and pepper taste so we usually don’t do this unless we have some sad herbs in the fridge that need to be used up. Always drizzle your bird with a little olive oil before adding it to the oven. The mix of the butter and oil will lead to a crispy and flavorful chicken!

Use those leftovers!

You can store your leftover chicken in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. You can use your leftover chicken for a bunch of other recipes like chicken salad, or use the leftover chicken breasts for other recipes. Once all of the meat has been used from the whole bird we like to take the carcass and make chicken stock out of it! You can follow our turkey stock recipe to do this.

We love to serve this with a side of roasted sweet potatoes or Brussels sprouts. Any vegetable or starch will go great as a side to this lemon pepper roasted chicken. I am not very skilled at breaking the bird apart so I usually wear a pair of gloves and do this by hand. It helps me to be able to remove every last bit of meat quickly, and then I don’t have to do it later in the week when I am hungry.

Working toward change.

We ordered this chicken from a farm which is something that we are going to try to do more often. The two of us have been reading and watching a lot of media on the health of our food industry and how that affects our bodies. We are on a very slow mission to start replacing the food we purchase at the grocery store with local and homegrown options.

We signed up for a CSA (community-sourced agricultural) box for the summer, and we plan to plant our garden very soon! This way we can make sure that the fruit and vegetables we are eating are grown locally. We aren’t perfect at this yet but we love taking little steps each day.