How to Roast a Chicken

A 1.8 kg chicken roasts in around an hour and a half at 180°C in a fan oven, then rests for 15 to 20 minutes. The exact time depends on the weight and on whether your oven is fan or conventional, which is what the calculator is for. Everything else below is about getting the rest of it right.

Enter the weight on the packaging to get the roasting time, oven temperature, resting time and how to check it is done: Chicken Cooking Time Calculator

As a rough guide, a 1.5 kg chicken feeds four people as a roast dinner with a good amount of meat left over, and a 2 kg bird feeds five or six. If you want leftovers for sandwiches or a curry the next day, go one size up rather than adding an extra dish.

Bone and carcass are a large part of the weight, so raw weight per person is not the same as meat per person. Work it out from the number of people rather than guessing: Chicken Per Person Calculator.

Two approaches both work. The simplest is a steady moderate oven for the whole roast, which is what the calculator assumes. The alternative is 20 minutes hot at the start to get the skin going, then the rest at the moderate temperature, if you do that, count the hot period as part of the total time rather than adding it on.

If the recipe you are following gives a conventional oven temperature and yours is a fan oven, convert it rather than using the number as printed: Fan Oven Converter or the Oven Temperature and Gas Mark Converter.

1. Take the chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before it goes in, and pat the skin dry: wet skin steams instead of browning. Do not rinse it.

2. Season the skin generously with salt. Put something aromatic in the cavity if you like (half a lemon, a few thyme sprigs, a halved onion) but do not pack it tightly.

3. Roast breast-side up on a rack or a bed of thick onion slices so the base is not sitting in liquid.

4. Baste once or twice if it is easy, but do not keep opening the door: every opening drops the oven temperature and extends the time.

5. Check it in the thickest part of the thigh, not the breast. The safety guidance below sets out exactly what you are looking for.

6. Rest it for 15 to 20 minutes under loose foil. This is not a delay. It is when the juices settle, and it is also the window in which roast potatoes and vegetables can have the oven turned up.

Stuffing inside the cavity slows the heat reaching the middle, so a stuffed bird needs longer and the middle of the stuffing needs to be properly hot too. If you are cooking for a crowd, it is easier and faster to bake the stuffing separately in a dish.

For how much stuffing you actually need: Stuffing Quantity Calculator

Timing from the oven going on. Time from the chicken going in, and only once the oven is at temperature.

Checking the breast. The thigh is the last part to come up to temperature, so that is where to check.

Carving straight away. Ten minutes of resting makes a bigger difference to how the meat eats than anything you do to the skin.

Forgetting the rest of the meal. Potatoes and Yorkshire puddings want a hotter oven than the chicken. Plan that rather than discovering it at 1pm.

The chicken is usually the easiest dish to time and the hardest to work around, because everything else wants the oven at a different temperature. Add each dish as you work out its time and you get a single schedule with the clashes flagged.

If several dishes need the oven: Meal Synchroniser

For the trimmings themselves: Roast Potatoes and Gravy.

Strip the carcass while it is still warm (it is far easier), then cool the meat and get it into the fridge promptly. The carcass makes a good stock and freezes well if you do not want to boil it today.

For how long the meat keeps and how to reheat it: Leftover Storage Calculator