This easy roast chicken recipe makes moist, delicious chicken. Spend 5 to 10 minutes preparing it, add carrots and potatoes and you’re done with dinner! You can find this recipe in our Dining On A Dime Cookbook on page 206.
Your family will love this healthy chicken recipe and it’s very versatile, so you can make it with a variety of different sides and have many different meals. Mike and the kids love this chicken and it’s a frequent favorite at our home. You can also use the roast chicken leftovers to make lots of other recipes that are best with roast chicken!
The BEST 3 Ingredient Roast Chicken Recipe
1 chicken
1-2 cloves garlic
olive oil
salt and pepper
Optional Ingredients
1 tsp. thyme (to taste)
1 tsp. rosemary (to taste)
1 tsp. oregano (to taste)
Rub the inside of the chicken with garlic cloves. If you’re using the optional items, put the thyme, rosemary and oregano to taste inside the bird. Rub the outside of the bird with olive oil and salt and pepper.
Bake at 450 degrees to 500 degrees for 15 minutes then turn the oven down to 400 degrees and roast for 35-45 minutes (for a 2 1/2 pound bird) or 1 hour (for a 3-5 pound bird) or until the temperature of the thigh reaches 180 degrees. You can also let it cook all day in the crockpot on low. Allow to rest 10 minutes before serving. Serves 6-8.
This easy roast chicken recipe is from our cookbook:
Click here to get the Dining On A Dime Cookbook, with tasty recipes and great tips to make your life easier and save you money!
Eleanor Lokey says
I notice your (and every other recipe provider) uses garlic in almost every recipe (except desserts). My husband and I do not like garlic, even though it “is good for you.” Could you give alternates sometimes or cut down the amounts? Must every recipe need garlic to make it tasty???
Jill says
Eleanor of course not. In the same way I don’t like onions and most recipes call for onions I just adjust it to my taste – I just leave it out. Now something like the garlic salad is like an onion soup so I don’t fix that but most of the other recipes it is easy to leave out. Most cookbooks have recipes where we don’t always like all of the ingredients you just adjust it plus if you read all of our web site and posts not all of our recipes do use garlic we have many without.
I always say I am left handed living in a right handed world. I just adapt.
Beverly says
I roast a chicken almost every week. I buy the biggest chicken I can find from Wally’s usually at $.87 a pound. So for about $5.00 I can get at least 3 meals plus lunches for our family of 3 adults. I use a variety of seasoning on the chicken, rotisserie, Kicken’ chicken, lemon pepper, herbs, whatever I’m in the mood for. You can also put a halfed orange inside.
The first dinner is usually chicken, with mashed potatoes, salad, and a veg. Maybe chicken enchiladas the next night with Mexican rice or homemade refried beans, then a chicken noodle casserole, or creamed chicken over biscuts or English muffins. And then finally a soup or chicken and noodles with the chicken bones, the broth from the original roasting, and the pickings on the bones. There is usually leftovers each night for at least one person to have for lunch the next day.
Can’t hardly get cheaper than that from that bird!
Jackie says
Beverly, if you make a soup with the chicken bones, aren’t they so small that you can choke on them, or accidently bite into one or something? And how do you save the broth from the original roasting? Thanks!
Jill says
Jackie making soup from chicken is one of the easiest and tastiest things to do. Turkey soup too is done like this. You just strain the bones and things like bay leaves if you use them out and use the broth and even a roasted chicken produce a bunch more broth. You are just cooking the “flavor” out and a roasted chicken done this way is delicious. Here is our how to make basic chicken and turkey soup post off of the web site. If you read it it might help you to understand how it is done better.
grandma says
to make it really easy use a pasta pot and put all the ingredients into the pasta part when it is cooked just lift out the pasta basket and you have the broth.
When the boys were little I told them the one who got the bone was the one who got the love part of the meal.
They were disappointed if they didn’t get a bone. It was a sort of game with us.
Tommienell Ellis says
My German grandmother always put a bit of vinegar in when using bones to boil for soup—-calcium from the bones goes into soup—-be stingy, you don’t want to taste the vinegar. Tommie
jean says
I get several meals from one chicken. When there are just scraps left, I use a little olive oil in my frypan and soften onions and peppers. Then I add a can of tomatoes and some spices (basil, garlic, tarragon.) The chicken goes in last. This can be served over rice or mixed with pasta. It tastes great when reheated, too.
Jane says
Are the herbs in this recipe fresh or dried? If using fresh, how do you the adjust the amount? Thank you
Jill says
You can use either, I think Tawra mostly uses dried. You will have to adjust the amount and you will have to adjust it for your own tastes. I personally don’t like the taste of herbs hardly at all but Tawra loves them so we each will do ours differently.
CJ says
We love roast chicken! But that seems like an awful hot oven, usually poultry is roasted much lower.
You don’t have any trouble getting it to cook through properly?
Jill says
It is a hot oven but that is what you cook it at. Cooking at 450 degrees for 15 mins. browns it and then you turn it down to 400. Martha Stewart does her main roasted chicken at 425 degrees which is even hotter.
Sandy Pittman says
At our house it is all about a moist chicken. I roast my chicken breast side down on a rack in a baking dish. I put a cup or two of water into the bottom of dish (depending on dish size). I don’t want the water to touch the meat. After the bird is about 20 degrees from being done I turn it over so the breast can be basted and gets a nice crispy skin. It is so moist and even the leftovers are moist .
Julia says
You two are so cute together. I hope your books sell well and you can do even more now with You Tube.You came up on Youtube although I was not even looking at frugal posts, just the political ones. I love your attitude and confidence and happy outlook despite your disabilities. I may be forced into early retirement due to unexpected health problem and am worried about money. But if you two can do it I can. I think you should write a book about extra ways to make money to supplement Social Security. I used to walk my niece in the stroller for almost a mile in order to get her to fall asleep for her afternoon nap. My sister used to have to drive her colicky baby in the car so the motion would soothe him or hold him atop the washing machine. So I could relate to the B.J. story. Now they have those baby swings but for some reason they didn’t like them.
Jill says
Oh thank you so much Julia for such a nice and encouraging comment. You do understand all the “stroller” I had to do with B.J. I did love doing it because we had so much fun but it was exhausting. 🙂
Jennifer says
I wonder, can I roast chicken parts? We got a package of thighs on sale today (about the same price as the rotisserie chicken) so India like to roast a big batch of these and the I have a little bit to work with throughout the week,
Jill says
Yes you can as a matter of fact that is all I roast now. I slap them in a pan with salt and pepper, uncovered and just roast at about 350- 375 degrees for about 35 mins. until juices run clear. If I am not in hurry I will cover them and bake them at 250 degrees for 2-3 hours and they will fall off the bone. Usually the skin doesn’t get as crispy this way although you can turn the heat up to 350 the last 30 mins to crisp it a little if you need to