Roast Chicken with Spice Butter

Who does not like a good roast chicken, with its potatoes and its vegetables? And if I tell you that there is a utensil where it is made by itself and that on top of that the oven does not stain... Well, what I am telling you, with the Emile Henry chicken roasting oven you can get a crispy, golden-brown chicken that avoids the dreaded grease all over the oven.

There are thousands of roast chicken recipes, I know… But how many of them leave juicy breasts? With this technique of introducing butter between the skin and the meat, in conjunction with Emile Henry's ceramic oven, you will have juicy and tender breasts.

The method is very simple; With the help of our fingers we are going to begin to carefully separate the skin from the meat. We can do it from the neck area. Little by little we are going to introduce our fingers until we create space. In this hole we are going to put the spiced butter and we will distribute it over all the breasts. Remember to stretch the skin after finishing. The next step will be to massage the chicken on the outside with the rest of the spiced butter.

Do not forget to impregnate all the vegetables with olive oil, spices and season to taste. Massage well and ready to bake.

Finally, I'll tell you a secret... If you want an EXTRA crunchy skin, you can brush both the chicken and vegetables with honey and put (uncovered) in the oven for 5-10 minutes at 220 ºC. This step is completely optional, but I love the result.

Ceramic oven to roast chicken or turkey Emile Henry

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, cleaned (1,800 kg)
• 125g butter at room temp. atmosphere
• A few sprigs of rosemary and fresh thyme
• freshly ground black pepper
• A pinch of flake salt
• grated nutmeg
• Orange and/or lemon zest
• Red, purple, and French potatoes, washed
• French onions and shallots
• 1 red onion peeled and quartered
• Whole carrots, peeled
• A few unpeeled garlic cloves
• honey (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 200 ºC heat up and down.
2. Remove the chicken from the fridge 1 hour before starting. We dry it well with kitchen paper (interior and exterior) to remove any moisture it may have. This step is very important to get crispy chicken.
3. In a small bowl , mix the softened butter with the rosemary and thyme leaves, zest, a pinch of salt, pepper and freshly ground nutmeg.
4. With the help of our hands we will make a hole between the skin and the meat of the chicken. In this cavity we will push the butter mixture, spreading it over all the breasts. Once it is well filled with butter, we proceed to massage the outside with the rest of the butter.
5. We introduce half an orange inside the chicken and some branches of rosemary.
6. Cut the red potatoes in quarters, the purple ones in half and the French ones, since they are so small we will leave them whole.
7. We massage all the vegetables with olive oil, salt, pepper and spices to taste.
8. We place the chicken in the Emile Henry chicken oven and place all the garnish inside (potatoes, carrots, garlic, onions). We cover the ceramic oven.
9. Bake for approximately 1 hour (35 min per kilo). Remove from the oven and uncover. To make sure that the chicken is cooked, insert a kitchen thermometer between the breast and the thigh, it should indicate about 72 ºC.

Emile Henry ceramic oven for roasting chicken or turkey , Microplane Master series grater , T&G acacia wood cutting board and Pallarès high carbon steel kitchen knife with boxwood handle