Oven-Roasted Whole Chicken

July 12, 2025

Cooking a whole chicken is a lot easier than it might sound. Roasting it with chopped veggies makes a simple one-dish meal that can feed you for several days and provide the basis of another meal later in the week: chicken noodle soup!

Purchasing and eating a whole chicken can be more sustainable than consuming single cuts. Often, choice cuts like chicken breast sell first, leaving wings, thighs, and legs behind to pile up for producers. In large-scale food systems, those cuts get passed down for lesser uses. In small-scale systems, farmers have to figure out what to do with them. It's easier for a small producer to sell the full bird instead of managing a variety of cuts.

Using the whole chicken benefits consumers too. You can create a wider vairety of dishes. The meat is often juicer because the moisture is held in better. You get more bang for your buck by doing some of the labor yourself. And you get a greater variety of nutrients, since different parts of the chicken have different nutritional benefits.

In addition to all that, eating the whole bird helps connect us to our past and to the chicken itself. It's a better way to appreciate the animal's life and sacrifice. And it helps me appreciate how my great-grandmother fed her family. She didn’t have the luxury of feeding her children only the chicken breast. They wasted no part of the animals they raised. They couldn’t afford to. It has been fulfilling for me to learn fundamental kitchen skills by piecing out the chicken. With these instructions from our friend Martha, it's really quite simple and helps me feel more connected to my food.

Below is one of my favorite ways to roast a chicken and take advantage of the great potato, onion, and carrot crops we have at the moment. Please feel encouraged to substitute your favorite veggies and spices. Once you’re done, be sure to put the leftover bones and carcass into a slower cooker or pressure cooker to create tasty homemade bone broth. You can find many simple recipes for bone broth across the internet. Add the leftover chicken and more root veggies to that broth, and you'll have the basis for a great homemade soup you can eat later in the week or freeze for this fall.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken
1 T. olive oil
Salt, pepper, and other preferred spices (I used sage, thyme, and oregano)
3-4 cloves garlic, optional
1-2 lbs. potatoes
1 large yellow or red onion (I used half of each for variety)
5-6 medium to large carrots

Prepare:

Thaw your whole chicken in the fridge for 24 hours.
Preheat the oven to 425º F.
Set your chicken on a plate and pat dry.
Rub the entire chicken with olive oil, making sure to include the bottom.
Sprinkle generously with spices, and rub them in.
Tie the legs together. (This helps lock in moisture. I use our corn-based dental floss [don’t tell Justine!].)
Place chicken in a cast-iron skillet or oven-safe pan.
Chop veggies and place around the chicken. (I used a second skillet for the extra veggies.)

Cook:

Cook in the oven at 425º until chicken reaches 165º in the thickest part of the thigh. This will take about 50-60 minutes for a 3-4 lb. chicken. (Check at 50 minute to ensure the chicken does not become overcooked and dry.) Add about another 10 minutes for each additional pound.
Let the chicken rest for 10-15 minutes after cooking before piecing it out and eating.

Enjoy your classically and simply roasted whole chicken! As I mentioned, be sure to save the entire carcass and all of the bones to make your very own nutrient-dense chicken broth. I used mine to make some really tasty chicken noodle soup. You’ve already got garlic, onions, carrots, and leftover chicken, so all you’ll need are some egg noodles to finish it out!

-Robert

(Below is the start of my bone broth)