Roasting Whole Chicken for the First Time Was Easy!

November 26, 2022 by soLing

I will definitely roast a whole chicken in the oven in the future now that I know how easy it is.

Below are some links to more details, including photos:

My Story
Inspiring Recipe
- First Try
- Second Try
Continuous Improvement
Lesson for Dumber Self
Next Step for You

My Story

I’ve come across recipes for whole chicken that sounded tasty, yet had simple ingredients and was easy to make. However, I’ve shied away from them because I didn’t want to handle a whole raw chicken. What tempted me this time was a recipe for something similar to Peking duck that used chicken as the main ingredient.

Inspiring Recipe

The recipe that I found was Oven Roasted Peking Chicken from the website called Omnivore’s Cookbook. This recipe was shared by Joyce from Pups with Chopsticks, a food blog.

I’ve enjoyed a couple of recipes from Omnivore’s Cookbook before, e.g., Hainanese chicken rice, but this is the first time that I saw one from another food blogger.

Over on Pups with Chopsticks, not only was the chicken recipe also posted, there were a couple of recipes for dog treats as well!

First Try

Needing only seven ingredients to prepare this recipe, all I had to do was buy the chicken.

Ingredients to Use

Starting with 5.81 pounds of chicken, I increased the remaining ingredients on the recipe to the following amounts:

For the chicken

1/2 teaspoon of five spice powder

For the marinade

2 ounces + 1/2 tablespoon of light soy sauce
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon + 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
6 slices of ginger
1 1/8 teaspoons of five spice powder

For the basting sauce

2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon of honey

For the light soy sauce, there didn’t seem to be enough in the bottle, so I had one ready to make up the difference.

Also, for the basting sauce, I chose honey over maple syrup because that’s what I already had in the cabinet.

Light soy sauce, honey, ginger, dark soy sauce, five spice powder, chicken, and sugar

Bottle of light soy sauce — Light soy sauce

Steps to Prepare

The instructions were easy to follow and had useful tips, which I was grateful for. The sections where I made some adjustments were as follows:

Marinate the chicken

Instead of combining the marinade ingredients directly in a bag, I used a cup first. That way, I didn’t have to worry about the bag falling over and liquid leaking to the counter. Also, since I was already using the cup to measure out one of the ingredients, it was simpler just to add the remaining ingredients to it.

After everything was in the bag, I marinated the chicken for about five hours.

Roast chicken

For Step 2, I took Joyce’s suggestion on using crumpled foil balls to support the chicken because I don’t have a roasting rack. In addition, I added a piece of onion that I had left in the refrigerator.

For Step 4, I didn’t have any oil drippings when it was time to baste the chicken after the first 20 minutes nor the second 20 minutes, so I used two tablespoons of oil each time instead.

For Step 5, since the chicken was over five pounds, I thought it would take around two hours to cook, so I started basting the skin with the sauce every 10 minutes after 1 hour and 30 minutes of roasting the chicken.

By the time I got to Step 6 to check the temperature, the chicken had already reached 190 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, I took the chicken out of the oven after a total roasting time of 1 hour and 50 minutes and did not baste it a third time.

Chicken in a bag with marinade — Chicken with marinade

Chicken on a foiled-line baking sheet before roasting

Cooked basting sauce in a saucepan — Cooked basting sauce

Roasted chicken resting on a baking sheet — Resting roasted chicken

Time to Eat

After the chicken rested for 15 minutes, I tried my best to carve the hot meat. Soon, it was ready to eat.

Plated of carved chicken — Carved chicken

Recipe Rating

Below were the results of the recipe after the first try:

Number of Ingredients	Effort (Low🤏, Medium🤏🤏, High🤏🤏🤏)	Cost per Serving (<$2💰, $2-5💰💰, >$5💰💰💰)	Taste (Not for me🤔, Trying Again🙂, Eating Regularly😋)
7️⃣	🤏	💰💰	🙂

The chicken had a good aroma from the five spice powder. The meat was soft and tasty, but would have been better if the whole chicken had the sweetness that the wings had.

Second Try

For the second attempt, my goal was to get the cooking time right so the chicken would reach only 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, I wanted the meat and skin to be more flavorful.