Just in time for fall, this roasted chicken with maple rosemary butter makes our whole house smell amazing . . .
Why a Roasted Maple Chicken
I started looking for more roasted chicken recipes recently. We had been doing lots of chicken thighs (which are completely delicious and are nearly impossible to overcook despite my best efforts) but eventually I started thinking that maybe we ought to branch out a bit from chicken thighs. Fewer legless chickens out there, plus this way we can use the leftover bones to make broth.
This roasted maple chicken looked like the perfect cozy dinner recipe for fall and like a great easy weeknight chicken. The recipe below is a tweaked version of a NYT Cooking recipe — I’ve added instructions on how to make an irresistible sauce (great to put on veggies to induce a stubborn toddler to partake). And I’ve simplified the basting process a bit.
The recipe turns out a beautiful chicken every time. Perhaps more importantly, we have yet to have issues getting our kids to eat this chicken.
So simple
One of the reasons I love making this maple chicken recipe is that it requires minimal prep. It’s now one of my go-to dishes for when I failed to plan ahead but have a chicken (and some rosemary, which somehow seems to keep forever) in the fridge. Of course, we somehow always seem to have loads of butter and plenty of maple syrup on hand. Thank you, Costco.
You basically mix up a super simple glaze for the chicken, spoon it over the top of the chicken before it cooks, and a couple more times as it cooks, and then take it out of the oven and enjoy. The sauce is optional, but it takes another couple of minutes and an immersion blender if you have on hand. Note that you can skip the blender — just mix the sauce each time before you pour it over your food.
Sides that work really well with this one
So this isn’t a full meal – just the chicken part of a meal. I think this is great with roasted squash and pasta (the sauce works really well on both). Also, it can be nice to have a bright and green vegetable alongside the chicken, so I’ll often do a simple arugula salad or quick asparagus.
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Whole Roasted Maple Butter Chicken
Just in time for fall, this roasted chicken with maple butter and rosemary makes our whole house smell amazing . . .
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Yield: 1 delicious chicken 1x
Ingredients
5 tbsp butter (salted or unsalted)
4 tbsp maple syrup
4 good long sprigs of rosemary (thyme also works, but increase to 8 long sprigs)
salt and pepper
approximately 4-pound chicken (+/- 1 pound will just speed or slow cooking time)
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Make the glaze.
Melt 5 tbsp of butter in a small saucepan over low medium heat. Add 3/4 tsp salt if using salted butter; if using unsalted, add 1 tsp salt. While the butter melts, wash the rosemary, strip the leaves off 2 of the stems (not all 4), and chop it up. Add it to the butter.
Add 4 tbsp of maple syrup. Once the butter is completely melted, stir well and heat until it comes to a simmer and then turn off the heat.
3. Prep the chicken.
Put the chicken in a cast iron skillet or other roasting pan just big enough to fit the chicken (if it’s too big, more of the drippings will evaporate during baking). Make sure you get out any giblets (not a good thing to forget I’ve found). Place the 2 remaining sprigs of rosemary into the chicken’s cavity.
Pour about a third of the glaze over the chicken, making sure that you’ve completely coated the chicken (I put gloves on one hand and smear the sauce everywhere to make sure it gets all over the chicken).
Then liberally sprinkle the chicken with salt and some pepper (if you do this before adding the glaze, the glaze will wash the salt off).
4. Pop that chicken in the oven.
Roast it for about 20 minutes, then take it back out. See how its browning. (Is it even? If not, rotate the chicken when you put it back in the oven).
Pour 1/2 of the remaining sauce over the chicken, covering the surface area of the chicken as well as you can. Then pop it back in the oven and roast it for another 20 minutes. Take it out after 20minutes, pour the rest of the sauce over it, and temp the chicken — it probably needs 10-20 more minutes of cooking. It’s finished when a thermometer inserted deep into the breast reaches 155F (just make sure you don’t push the thermometer all the way into the cavity and get a faulty reading — this is surprisingly easy to do with a small chicken!).
Then take it out and let it rest for 10 min.
5. Finish the maple butter sauce.
If you want sauce (you want the sauce), after the chicken has rested, move the chicken onto a (wooden) cutting board so that it’s ready to cut up. If I use a cast iron, I will just heat the drippings back up where they are. If you used a roasting pan or other dish, you’ll need to pour the drippings back into the original sauce pan you used to make the glaze.
Bring the sauce to simmer and let it reduce the sauce for maybe 4-5 minutes. Don’t be tempted to pour off the butter.
As soon as it starts to cool, the sauce will separate into the maple syrup and chicken drippings and the butter.
If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can stop here. Just use a spoon to mix the sauce each time before you pour it over your food.
If you have an immersion blender, now is the time to use it! Blend the sauce in order to force the drippings and butter to mix (you’re creating an emulsion – great fun lesson for the kids if they want to watch from a distance, but be very careful with them around those hot drippings!). Blend those drippings and butter until you have a cohesive sauce.
7. Serve up your chicken. Apply sauce as needed!
- Prep Time: 10 min
- Cook Time: 60 min
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Bake
