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This super easy Roast Chicken with Lemon and Thyme gives you a beautifully juicy roast chicken that’s full of fresh lemony flavor. Roasted and steamed in fresh lemon juice, this yummy dinner recipe gives you not only dinner but lunch the following day and a crazy good for you soup for the lunch the day after that! Three birds…one stone, so to speak!
Roast Chicken With Lemon And Thyme
Who doesn’t love a good roast chicken? If you’re a meat eating family, the chances are chicken features in your weekly meal plans. Kids seem to love the neutral taste of chicken and since there’s just so much you can do with chicken, it’s likely to come up often.
One of the things I love most about roasting a whole chicken is that it’s not just one meal you get, there’s lots to do with the leftovers. That said, there are two things we do most often with leftover roast chicken: Chicken sandwiches and chicken bone broth. While the bone broth is pretty much the only thing to do with, well, bones, even though there’s a whole variety of things you could do with the left over meat, chicken sandwiches is mostly where we’re at :)
Most of the time this chicken is stripped bare at dinner, but sometimes I’ll sneakily take a few slices for the next days lunchboxes before anyone can get their hands on it. Two slices of chunky wholegrain bread, a little butter and some roast chicken. Simple but effective, they’re all happy when they get this for lunch!
I buy an Organic whole chicken. It is more expensive than non Organic of course as we’d expect it to be, but I justify the price increase by the fact I use it for more than one meal. If I’m not buying Organic chicken I buy free range, corn fed chicken anyway and that’s still more expensive than the cheapest chicken available where I live. Make sure you’re happy with the quality of the chicken you’re buying and that you know the conditions it was raised in. I believe it’s better to eat less of it so you can spend a bit more, than buy the very cheapest pieces of chicken.
Juicy Roast Chicken
By adding Thyme butter to this roast chicken, you’re guaranteed juicy meat. I add Thyme butter under the skin of the chicken, by parting the skin from the flesh and creating a butter layer that seeps into the chicken as it cooks and stops it from drying out.
Chicken can be dry. It’s a fairly low fat meat and so doesn’t have the fat to keep it moist on its own. Adding the butter like this (and giving it some moisture from the lemons and a foil cover to protect it from the direct heat) means you can avoid the dryness.
Fresh Thyme And Lemon
I use fresh Thyme from the garden (or store!) and fresh lemons for this recipe. You can use dried Thyme if you can’t get hold of any of the fresh stuff, but you need fresh lemons for the juice that’s going to steam the chicken whilst it’s in the oven.
It can be tricky and a bit time consuming to get the Thyme leaves off their stems (a job for the kids…?) but well worth it. Don’t worry if you get some stem in it, it’s all chopped up small, no one will notice!
I squeeze the lemons over a little plastic sieve to catch any pips and then put the juice straight into the bottom of the roasting pan. Adding the juiced lemons into the cavity of the chicken not only gives the chicken more flavor but adds another level of moisture into the chicken.
Storing Leftovers
Left over roast chicken can be kept covered in the fridge for a couple of days. As I said, I like to use leftover roast chicken for sandwiches, so it’s never really left in the fridge past a day or two. I keep the bones for a bone broth, it’s so good for us, it’s full of nutrients and goes a long way to boosting immunity for the kids.
More Clean Eating Chicken Recipes
- Healthy chicken enchiladas
- Ginger honey chicken
- Lemon spaghetti with chicken
- Clean eating chicken piccata
- Clean eating butter chicken
How To Make Roast Chicken With Lemon And Thyme
Ingredients
- 1 Fresh chicken Organic
- 2 Lemons Fresh
- 5-6 Sprigs of Thyme Fresh, stalks removed
- ¼ Cup Butter Softened
- Salt and Pepper To season
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 190°
- Chop the Thyme leaves roughly and add the a bowl. Combine with the softened butter
- Gently part the chicken skin from the flesh using your hands. It’ll come away fairly easily, try not to tear the skin while you’re doing this. The skin attached to the back bone of the chicken will stay attached. You’ll essentially have a ‘pocket’ each side of the backbone
- Add a third of the Thyme butter to each ‘pocket’ of the chicken, under the skin using your hands. You’ll be able to create a layer of Thyme butter under the skin on each side
- Using the last third of the Thyme butter, brush this over the top of the chicken
- Squeeze the lemons and pour the lemon juice into the bottom of the roasting dish
- Take the 4 halves of squeezed lemons and stuff them into the chicken cavity
- Cover the chicken with foil and roast in the oven for 1½ hours
- After 1½ hours, take the chicken out of the oven and turn the oven to high
- Uncover the chicken and baste it with the lemon juice that will by now be combined with the chicken juice
- Put the chicken back into the oven for 10 minutes to crisp up the skin
- Serve!
Roast Chicken With Lemon And Thyme Recipe
Roast Chicken With Lemon And Thyme
Ingredients
- 1 Fresh chicken Organic
- 2 Lemons Fresh
- 5-6 Sprigs of Thyme Fresh, stalks removed
- ¼ Cup Butter Softened
- Salt and Pepper To season
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 190°
- Chop the Thyme leaves roughly and add the a bowl. Combine with the softened butter
- Gently part the chicken skin from the flesh using your hands. It'll come away fairly easily, try not to tear the skin while you're doing this. The skin attached to the back bone of the chicken will stay attached. You'll essentially have a 'pocket' each side of the backbone
- Add a third of the Thyme butter to each 'pocket' of the chicken, under the skin using your hands. You'll be able to create a layer of Thyme butter under the skin on each side
- Using the last third of the Thyme butter, brush this over the top of the chicken
- Squeeze the lemons and pour the lemon juice into the bottom of the roasting dish
- Take the 4 halves of squeezed lemons and stuff them into the chicken cavity
- Cover the chicken with foil and roast in the oven for 1½ hours
- After 1½ hours, take the chicken out of the oven and turn the oven to high
- Uncover the chicken and baste it with the lemon juice that will by now be combined with the chicken juice
- Put the chicken back into the oven for 10 minutes to crisp up the skin
- Serve!