Poulet Rôti
Roast chicken with butter under the skin and lemon inside, started on its side. The French method turns the bird twice so the breast is basted by its own legs.
Photograph credit: Poulet Roti Grand-Mere by arnold | inuyaki · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr
What to Put on the Table With Poulet Rôti
- Roast potatoes
- Green salad
- A glass of Burgundy
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Provençal Ratatouille, French Baguette, Fougasse.
How to Make Poulet Rôti
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Heat the oven to 200°C / 400°F. Work the softened butter under the breast skin with your fingers, pushing it as far back as it will go.
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Salt the bird inside and out and put the lemon, garlic and thyme in the cavity.
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Lay the onion slices in a roasting tin and sit the chicken on one side, on top of them. Pour the wine into the tin.
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Roast 25 minutes, then turn the bird onto its other side and roast 25 minutes more.
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Turn it breast-up and roast a final 25 minutes, until the thigh reads 70°C / 158°F. It will rise as it rests.
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Lift the bird onto a warm plate and rest 20 minutes, breast down for the first 10.
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Skim the tin, add the stock, boil hard scraping the base, and whisk in the cold butter. Carve and serve with the juices.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Knowing Before You Cook
Butter under the skin, not on it.
Turn it twice. The breast should face the heat last.
Out at 70°C / 158°F — it carries on cooking while it rests.
Changing the Recipe
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
- A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.
Storing and Reheating
Refrigerated for 3 days. The carcass makes stock. Cooked meat freezes for 2 months.
Questions and Answers
How long does Poulet Rôti take to make?
20 minutes of preparation and 1 hour 15 minutes of cooking, plus 20 minutes of resting, so allow 1 hour 55 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 4.
What's in a Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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