How To Make a Roasted Chicken By Yourself and Make It So Delicious & Crispy

 

Half a chicken with fries - we all know this classic from the food truck. Making crispy fried chicken yourself is not difficult at all. Today I will show you a few tips & tricks for preparing chicken from the oven.

Juicy, flavorful flesh along with crispy skin. That's probably how we all like our fried chicken. In addition, a few delicious potatoes as a side dish and a tasty chicken sauce. The perfect Sunday lunch is ready.

So, off to the kitchen - let's not waste any time and get started right away! Here is my step-by-step recipe for a crispy fried chicken!

INGREDIENTS FOR A DELICIOUS ROASTED CHICKEN

You don't need many ingredients for a delicious fried chicken. Let's take a look at the shopping list.

1. Chicken – It is best to buy a well-raised, organic chicken. These usually weigh between 1.4 and 1.7 kilograms. That's enough for around 4 people.
2. Salt – either soak the chicken in brine overnight or salt it with coarse sea salt just before cooking
3. Paprika powder – I like to use sweet and rose-hot paprika powder for the typical taste. But you are also welcome to use homemade fried chicken seasoning.
4. Butter – melted for the crispy skin. Sunflower oil or olive oil also work.

Of course, you can still fill your chicken with fresh herbs. But that doesn't apply to me because of the beer bottle (more on that below). For a strong sauce, I also use some fresh vegetables like carrots, celery, garlic, oranges, and onions - this is not a must, but the sauce practically makes itself. You can also find out how to do this in the following step-by-step instructions.

But if you have some time, then put the chicken in a quick-to-prepare brine. But first, it is well washed and cleaned.

You need about 3 liters of brine for a normal roast chicken that weighs around 1.7 kilograms. You make this from the following ingredients:

3 liters of water

150 grams of salt

You can also add a few spices such as 2 bay leaves, 1 teaspoon of fennel seed, 2 cloves of garlic, and/or a few sprigs of fresh thyme or rosemary to the brine. In America, this is called Lake Brine.

The salt is dissolved in around 500 ml of hot water. Then you fill everything up with the remaining 2.5 liters of cold water and place your chicken in the cooled brine. In the refrigerator, everything is now allowed to stand for 12 to 24 hours. Of course, you can also prepare more brine for several or larger chickens.

On the day of preparation, take your chicken out of the brine and dry it well with paper towels.

STEP 1 - PREPARE THE ROAST CHICKEN

Whether you've picked your chicken beforehand or not, the following steps are the same either way. First off, you need your raw chicken. Don't skimp on the quality here, it will be all the more delicious!

First, you cut off the upper wingtips. These often get very dry but can be used perfectly for our sauce.

If you didn't pickle your chicken in the brine, you can season it generously all over with salt at this point. Then preheat your oven to 200 degrees.

This is where it gets interesting because you now need an empty beer bottle, which we'll use as a prop for our chicken. Or you can buy a special fried chicken stand like this one.

Fill the empty, well-rinsed beer bottle (without label) halfway with water or beer. Then you put the chicken in the beer bottle.

When we cook the chicken like this, the hot air can get to all of the skin, making it really nice and crispy. Because if the chicken is cooked lying down, you often have the rather flabby skin where the chicken was in the roaster.

Place the bottle with the chicken on it in a large roasting pan or in a casserole dish. Around the chicken, you can put some olive oil, wing tips, a few cloves of garlic, two halved onions, or some chopped soup vegetables. Then add a good shot of white wine and 500 ml of hot water to the roaster. From this, we conjure up a quick sauce for the roast chicken.

STEP 2 - HOW TO GET THE CHICKEN REALLY CRISPY

Your chicken is now ready to roast in the oven. Put it down so the chicken can stand relaxed. It takes about 1 hour in the hot oven.

So that we get a really nice, crispy, and tasty skin, the chicken is coated with a mixture of paprika and oil. To do this, mix around 50 ml olive oil or rapeseed oil (you can also use melted butter) with 1 teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons paprika powder - either hot, sweet or a mixture of both.

When your chicken has been roasted in the oven for 40 minutes, start by brushing it with the paprika and seasoning mix. You can repeat this after a few minutes.

After another 15 to 20 minutes, your roast chicken will be really crispy, delicious, and ready to serve! Be careful not to overcook the chicken.

STEP 3 – CUT / HALVE ROAST CHICKEN

Now you take the roaster out of the oven and carefully remove the chicken from the beer bottle. Be careful not to burn yourself - the bottle, the contents of the bottle, and the chicken are quite hot.

Place the chicken on a board. For delicious half chickens, you can now simply halve it lengthways along the breastbone and serve it immediately. Or you carve it into breasts, wings, and thighs.

STEP 4 – QUICK CHICKEN SAUCE (OPTIONAL)

If you like, you can make a quick sauce out of the roasting juices. To do this, crush all the ingredients in the roaster and then pour the roast through a sieve into a saucepan.

You can then season the sauce with a little salt, pepper, sugar, and cream and, if necessary, thicken it with 1 teaspoon of starch.

Simply dissolve the cornstarch in a little water, add to the sauce, bring to a boil, and stir - done.

You can serve the crispy roast chicken with baked potatoes, fresh vegetables, a crisp salad, and sauce. Or you can make really tasty fries yourself.