Garlic Butter Roast Chicken

Richly flavored and robust, this recipe for Garlic Butter Roast Chicken is easy to prepare and delightful to enjoy.

It’s a magical scent — roasting a chicken in the oven on a cold winter day. It calls you to the kitchen, leaving your mouth watering. Add in the comforting fragrance of butter and garlic and it’s practically intoxicating.

Whether for a holiday dinner or a Sunday supper, Garlic Butter Roast Chicken is a winning recipe. Serve it with your favorite mashed potatoes (might I recommend Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes?), a vegetable side dish (Brown Butter Green Beans? Or perhaps Roasted Garlic Herb Carrots?) and maybe some biscuits (you won’t regret making these Whole Wheat Biscuits).

This flavorful chicken takes only a few simple ingredients: sliced garlic, unsalted butter, sweet Hungarian paprika, salt and pepper. Oh, and the chicken.

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Preparing it is also simple.

Slice the butter. Loosen the skin on the chicken. Slide slices of butter and garlic under the skin. Season the chicken all over with paprika, salt and pepper.

Then roast it.

It’s that simple.

Readers have asked in the past about the difference between roasting and baking. The short answer is not much.

Roasting is a term that refers to a dry method of cooking where heat surrounds the food, as it does in a hot oven. In terms of a dish like this, you are cooking the chicken on a rack so that the juices drip down and are kept separate from the chicken. As a result, the chicken cooks evenly on all sides without the excess juices touching the meat.

You don’t need a special pan for this — not exactly. A foil-covered baking sheet with a cooling rack set atop will do the trick.

Roasting and baking are essentially the same. Both are dry methods of cooking that result in browned, cooked throughout food. Roasting is the term often used when talking about meats and veggies though, while baking often refers to casseroles and baked goods.

Ready to dig in? Carve up this Garlic Butter Roast Chicken and enjoy.