Jump to Recipe Jump to Video Print Recipe

This Marcella Hazan Roast Chicken recipe is a classic for good reason. Just 2(!!!) ingredients - lemons and chicken (plus salt and pepper) - and you’ve got the moistest, most tender and most delicious roast chicken you’ve ever had. And it’s foolproof.

The most unique aspect of this recipe is that you roast the chicken breast side down for the first 30 minutes. When you do that, gravity forces all of the yummy juices down into the breast. This results in white meat that is incredibly moist and tender. My husband normally goes for the fattier leg or thigh meat when he eats chicken, but not with this recipe. He reaches immediately for the breast meat!

Marcella Hazan's roast chicken with lemons on a cutting board

Who was Marcella Hazan?

Marcella Hazan was an Italian cooking writer whose cookbooks were published in English. She is credited with introducing people in the United States and the United Kingdom to a world of Italian food and cooking beyond just spaghetti and meatballs. I have a well-worn copy of her timeless “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” cookbook. Pages fall out of the binding, but I won’t part with it. The recipes are absolutely wonderful and the book won the James Beard award for "Best Italian Cookbook" back in the 90's. This cookbook is a must for a serious Italian cook.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan's Roast Chicken with Lemons

What makes this a healthy “The Portion Queen” recipe?

Portion Control: People think they need more meat than they actually need. According to the Cleveland Clinic and many other trusted medical sources, a varied plant-based diet supplies all of the protein a human body requires, while reducing the risk of many chronic illnesses. But I recognize that some people love their meat. And although I personally focus on eating plant-based foods, I enjoy modest portions of meat, seafood and poultry.

So, here, a 4 pound roasted chicken easily serves 6 people healthy portions of meat. Surround this serving with abundant plant-based foods, such as this Arugula Fennel Salad, this Date and Feta Slaw, this Citrus Salad or some gorgeous Tomato Confit. An authentic Italian first course is this Bresaola Salad with arugula and parmesan (not exactly plant-based, but you do get your healthy greens.) You might even choose this Peach Burrata Salad as a side during the summer when peaches are at their peak. Add some roasted potatoes or a side of Marcella Hazan's Smothered Cabbage - Venetian Style and you’ve got a feast you will be proud to serve to company. Everyone loves this!

Ingredients for Marcella Hazan's Roast Chicken with Lemons

A note on lemons: The thick peel of citrus ensures that sprayed pesticides stay on the outside of the lemon instead of making their way into the flesh of the fruit. In this Marcella Hazan’s Roast Chicken with Lemons recipe, whole lemons, including the peel, are roasted inside the chicken. These pesticides are difficult to wash off and end up in the chicken meat and pan juices. So ideally, choose organic lemons. Also, the thinner and softer the lemon rinds are, the better for this dish as thin-skinned lemons typically will give off more juice than their thick-skinned cousins. 2 small lemons will fit inside a 4 pound chicken. If your lemons are large, you may only get one completely inside the cavity. This will not affect the outcome. Just make sure you poke plenty of holes into the lemons!

Lemons on a windowsill - Marcella Hazan's Roast Chicken with Lemons

chicken
lemons
salt

pepper

See recipe card for quantities.

Instructions for Marcella Hazan's Roast Chicken with Lemons

How long do you roast a chicken for?

The rule of thumb is 20-30 minutes of roasting time per pound. Oven temperatures vary, though, and whether you have a convection oven or not influences the cooking speed. Also, I don’t believe you can accurately tell when chicken is perfectly cooked by the way the exterior looks. So, I rely on my bluetooth meat thermometer.

Steps:

poking holes in lemons - Marcella Hazan's roast chicken with lemons

Wash and pat dry the lemons. Roll the lemons on your clean kitchen counter, applying pressure as you do so. This helps release more lemon juice while roasting the chicken. Puncture both lemons with a fork until you have lots of holes all over both lemons.

chicken salted and stuffed with lemons - Marcella Hazan's roast chicken with lemons

Remove the chicken from it’s grocery store or butcher’s packaging and place directly into a baking dish slightly larger than the chicken. Check the chicken’s cavities for the small package of gizzards, heat and liver and remove it. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and then liberally sprinkle sea salt and freshly ground pepper all over the chicken and inside the larger cavity. With your hands, rub this seasoning into the chicken. Place the lemons in the larger cavity of the chicken.

flipping the chicken - Marcella Hazan's roast chicken with lemons

Arrange the chicken breast side down in the roasting pan. If you have a remote meat thermometer, insert it into the thickest part of the breast. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, flip the bird. If you are right-handed, put an oven mitt on your left hand and a hold a wide spatula in your right hand. Place the spatula under the chicken on one side of the bird and place your mitted hand on top of the chicken and gently flip the chicken to breast side up. If you want to keep your oven mitt from getting dirty, you can place a piece of parchment paper or aluminum foil between your mitt and the chicken.

marcella hazan's roast chicken with lemons right out of the oven

Bake the chicken another 30 minutes and then raise the heat to 400 degrees for another 20-30 minutes. The chicken is done when a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast registers 165 degrees. Drain the fat off the top of the pan juices. Place the pan juices in a gravy boat and pass at the table. Or you can simply pour over the chicken on the serving platter.

Variations on Marcella Hazan's Roast Chicken with Lemons

Mushrooms - Place 1 pound of sliced cremini mushrooms (or a mixture of cremini and shiitake mushrooms) in the baking dish with the chicken after you flip the bird. You end up with luscious roasted mushrooms that absorb all of the lemony, chickeny goodness of the dish. The downside is that your lose the lovely lemony pan sauce that forms around the chicken. We love it both ways.
Carrots and Potatoes - Add thick slices of Yukon Gold potatoes and carrots to the pan with the chicken after the first ½ hour of cooking. Same caveat as the mushroom variation: you will have amazing tasting veggies, but will lose the pan juices to drizzle over the meat.

Herbs - Add sprigs of fresh thyme to the pan with the chicken before cooking and then add additional sprigs to garnish the sliced meat on the serving platter.

Equipment

Many of these tools are basics and are probably already in your kitchen, but if not, here are my picks for this dish:

Rubbermaid Glass Baking Dish - This is a beauty. It's super light weight, beautifully designed and the perfect size for a 4 pound chicken. It even comes with an ingenious rubber lid for preserving leftovers.

BFOUR Bluetooth Meat Thermometer - This is my secret weapon for perfectly cooking every type of meat. It comes with 3 probes, so you can monitor 3 different types of meat simultaneously. Or you can monitor different parts of a cut-up chicken (one probe in a breast, one in a leg and one in a thigh) and pull each piece out of the oven or off the grill at the exact perfect time. With a 196' bluetooth range, you can monitor the food anywhere, anytime with an app on your phone. So there's no need to worry about overcooking or under-cooking any more.

For Safety:

You're going to need some Heat Resistant Oven Gloves to flip the bird. I've tried it just with spatulas and other tools, but it's a disaster. You need a steadying hand on the bird as it flips over. Heat-resistant up to 932°F, these gloves have a food-grade silicone coating with nonslip grip texture, so handling the slippery chicken is no problem!

Additionally, flipping the chicken is easier with a larger spatula, particularly a Stainless Steel Fish Spatula, with it's long, wide head and and perfectly situated handle.

Top tips For Making Marcella Hazan's Roasted Chicken with Lemons

There are several instructions in Marcella Hazan’s original recipe that I used to follow religiously, but I now ignore completely. I no longer: rinse the chicken, close the cavity with toothpicks or tie the legs together. Here’s why:

Do I need to rinse the chicken?

No! When you wash the chicken, the juices that you wash off can contain salmonella and other nasties. These organisms end up on your kitchen counter or in your sink and can come in contact with human hands or vegetables or cooking utensils. It is much safer to just put the bird from the packaging directly into the baking dish, salting and stuffing the chicken right in dish. The heat from roasting will kill any dangerous organisms.

Do I need to close the cavity with the lemons?

You could, but why bother? If your lemons fit inside the cavity of your chicken, they are unlikely to fall out, even during the flipping process, especially if you are gentle when doing the flipping.

Do I need to tie the legs?

No. The original version of Marcella Hazan’s recipe has you tie the chicken legs loosely. Marcella reasoned that the legs tend to move apart during roasting and can tear the skin. So, if you tie the legs, there is a better chance that the skin on the chicken will remain intact, the bird will puff up and the presentation at the table will be more dramatic. Having made this recipe countless times, I find that it is difficult to keep the skin intact during the flipping process, so why stress about it? Additionally, I carve the chicken in the kitchen, not at the dinner table, so who am I impressing with a perfectly puffed up chicken?

Recipe