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Would you like to know a trick to tender, succulent, roast chicken?
Overnight brining.
We usually roast chickens breast side down to ensure tender breast meat. But with the overnight brining in a roasted garlic and lemon juice marinade, the breast meat was perfectly moist, even cooked breast up.
The garlic flavor is subtle, not strong or overwhelming, due to roasting the garlic first.
- Want to learn how to prep that chicken for the oven? Our guide, How to Truss a Chicken, will show you how!
Roasted Garlic Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup roasted garlic cloves
- 2 cups water
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 lemon, cut into 4 wedges
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 (3-4 pound) whole roasting chicken
Method
1 Make the brine: Prepare the brine by combining garlic, water, salt, pepper and olive oil in a blender. Squeeze the juice from the lemon wedges into the brine, blend. Stir in the bay leaves.
2 Brine the chicken overnight: Place chicken in a large, resealable plastic bag, or in a large non-reactive bowl. Pour the brine all over the chicken in the bag, or in the bowl. Add the (already squeezed) lemon wedges.
Squeeze out all the air from the bag and seal, or place plastic wrap over the chicken in the bowl. Refrigerate overnight - 12 to 24 hours.
3 Roast the chicken: Preheat the oven to 375°F. Remove the chicken from the brine. Pat dry with paper towels. Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the chicken.
Place the chicken on a rack, in a roasting pan, breast side up. Roast for about an hour, until the juices run clear from the thigh when pierced with a fork. (Thigh meat should have an internal temperature of 165°F when tested with a meat thermometer.)
Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes before carving and serving.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
Roasted Garlic Chicken
Fantastic, I only had loose skinless garlic clove roasted them as directed and it was so tasty and juicy
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What do you do with the garlic?
Hi Larry, good question! The answer is nothing. The already roasted garlic has been marinating the raw chicken and infusing it with flavor. If you then recooked the garlic when you roasted the chicken I suspect that the garlic would shrivel up and not be worth eating. That said, if you made gravy with the roast drippings, you could smash a few of the roasted garlic cloves into the gravy and let it simmer away, as long as you simmered it for at least 10 minutes to kill any of the bacteria it may have picked up from the raw chicken.
It was so juicy & delicious! I think the best I have ever eaten! I will definitely share this one.
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Amazing chicken recipe. I made two oven stuffers marinated 24 hours then baked in a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes then finished in a 275 degree oven for 5 hours. there was so much juice and the resulting gravy was fabulous even without any additional seasonings. My new favorite chicken recipe!!!
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I’m so glad you liked it Beverly! I love the idea of starting out high to brown, and then lowering the heat for low and slow. That’s similar to how I cook whole turkey.
Should i rub the chicken with butter or oil?
Hi Victoria, it’s not necessary. Just pat the chicken dry with paper towels after you remove it from the marinade and sprinkle with salt and pepper.