Lemon & herb roasted chicken
Inspired by the Nando's lemon and herb roast chicken, a delicious marinade will elevate your roast chicken into something extra special!
5 mins
1 hour 30 mins
445 kcal
5 mins
1 hour 30 mins
445 kcal
SERVES
4
DIFFICULTY
EASY
SERVES
4
Difficulty
EASY
how to serve this lemon and herb roast chicken
I made this for the first time for a family movie night, where I cooked a Nando’s style fakeaway! My children don’t like anything spicy at the moment, so this lemon and herb coating was something to please everyone in the family, and my husband and I added chilli sauce at the end!
I served this up with homemade seasoned fries, a red cabbage and carrot coleslaw, and baby sweetcorn.
This chicken is also great just for a traditional Sunday roast! Accompany it with some tasty roast potatoes and a selection of vegetables for a meal that everyone will love.
I love to cook whole chickens, because you can get so many meals out of them! I often start with a roast dinner or chicken and chips, strip the remaining meat and use it for sandwiches, risotto, stir fries, and then make a simple chicken stock with the carcass, and usually use that and any leftover meat for a Thai chicken noodle soup!
If you are following Slimming World you will know that you need to syn the chicken skin- the great thing about this recipe is that the chicken still has lovely flavour even if you don’t eat the skin!
Do you have an Instagram account? Watch the step-by-step recipe in my Instagram reels!
How to work out the timings for roasting a chicken
Most chickens from a supermarket will give guidelines on the packaging for how long the chicken needs to be cooked, but if you get the chicken from the butchers or a farm shop you will need to work this out!
The rule of thumb for this is to calculate 45 minutes per kg, plus 20 minutes.
So if your chicken is 1.8kg this is how you would work it out:
45 x 1.8 (= 81 minutes) + 20 = 101 minutes (1 hour, 41 minutes)
I have found it so much easier to have a meat thermometer to give me the confidence to know that my chicken is cooked properly! A chicken that is cooked as it should be will have an internal temperature of 75-80°C.
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Lemon and herb roasted chicken
Ingredients
- 1 whole free-range chicken (approx. 1.5-1.8kg) (see note above for cooking time recommendations)
- 3 tbsp fat-free Greek yoghurt
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp rosemary (dried)
- 1 tsp parsley (dried)
- 1 tsp oregano (dried)
- 1 tsp thyme (dried)
- 1 tsp garlic granules
- 1 tsp onion granules
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1 lemon (zest only)
Instructions
- Remove the chicken from the fridge 30 minutes before you want to cook it, and pre-heat the oven to 200°c.
- In a small bowl, combine the yoghurt with all of the herbs, spices, and the lemon zest.
- Rub the marinade all over the skin of the chicken, getting it into the nooks and crannies (I find the easiest way to do this is with my hands!)
- Cover the chicken and baking tray with tin foil, and place on the middle shelf of the oven. Set a timer to go off 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time.
- When there are 15 minutes left of cooking time, remove the foil from the chicken for the remaining cooking time.
- When the chicken comes out of the oven, cover it loosely with the foil and allow it to rest for 30 minutes before carving.
