Welcome to Never Fail, a semi-regular column where we wax poetic about the recipes that never, ever let us down. This week: the roast chicken recipe that associate photo editor Emily Eisen just couldn't live without.
If you’ve spent more than five minutes with me in the past six months you’ll know two things. 1. Chicken is my favorite food. 2. Claire Saffitz’s roast chicken recipe is the best roast chicken recipe ever. I don’t say this lightly. This ingenious recipe—aptly named “No-Fail Roast Chicken with Lemon and Garlic”—is truly impossible to screw up.
I would know: I’ve now made this recipe at least 8 times. Well, to be completely honest, it didn’t turn out perfectly one time, but it was totally my fault. I put a roasting pan of veggies on a rack above the chicken, so the skin didn’t crisp up as perfectly as it had the other 7 times, but it was still delicious. I also learned from my mistake and started putting veggies like red onions, wedges of fennel, and even thinly sliced potatoes in the chicken pan, under the chicken where they could bathe in all of that hot, chicken-y goodness.
There are the obvious reasons one would love this recipe. It calls for just 6 ingredients. You only have to wash 3 things when you're done (knife, cutting board, pan). And the step by step photographs show you exactly what to do. But I really love this recipe because it is simple enough to make for yourself, on a weeknight, and you’ll get dinner and leftovers—kinda what I’m always going for when cooking for one. But at the same time, it's super impressive to cook for friends, and even better if you’re cooking for someone special for the first time—who wouldn’t want to date someone who can roast a perfect chicken? Obviously, not me.
The best thing about this roast chicken recipe is that, even having made it so many times, I still impress myself when I make it. Every. Single. Time. I can’t help but take a picture of the result. (Sorry to the friends who get my chicken photos every few weeks, but you have to admit that it looks delicious.) But the real sign of my love for this recipe is this: I don’t even have to google it anymore. I know the recipe by heart.
