No.7 The 100 Most Popular Recipes Ever · October 2026

Perfect roast chicken

Made famous by Ina Garten

Photo: Onny Nagathan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, 1999.

The recipe Ina says got her engaged: lemon, garlic and thyme inside, vegetables underneath. Roast chicken is the dinner more home cooks learn first than any other.

Written in our own words and tested in a home kitchen. Get the original in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.

Ingredients

• 1 roasting chicken, 5 to 6 lb (2.3 to 2.7 kg), giblets removed
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 large bunch fresh thyme, plus 20 sprigs
• 1 lemon, halved
• 1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise
• 2 tbsp (28 g) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 large yellow onion, thickly sliced
• 4 carrots, cut into 2-inch chunks
• 1 bulb fennel, tops removed, cut into wedges
• Olive oil

Steps

1. Heat the oven to 425F (220C). Rinse the chicken if you like, then pat it very dry inside and out with paper towels. Dry skin is what makes it crisp.
2. Salt and pepper the inside of the chicken generously. Stuff the cavity with the bunch of thyme, both lemon halves and the garlic.
3. Brush the outside with the melted butter and season well all over with salt and pepper (about 1 tablespoon kosher salt in total). Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wing tips under the body.
4. Toss the onion, carrots and fennel in a roasting pan with salt, pepper, the 20 thyme sprigs and a little olive oil. Spread them out and set the chicken on top.
5. Roast 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and the thigh and the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F (74C).
6. Move the chicken to a board, cover loosely with foil and rest 20 minutes so the juices settle. Slice and serve with the vegetables.

Chef's tips

• Salt the chicken a day ahead and leave it uncovered in the fridge for even crisper skin.
• Scrape up the browned bits in the pan with a splash of stock for a quick sauce.

This is Chef Amazing's write-up of the dish, tested for a home kitchen. The original is in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten: get the book, No. 19 on The 100 Greatest Cookbooks.

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