How long to cook 7.5 lb chicken

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Chicken School

We'll show you how to easily make a stuffed roast chicken.

If you’ve never done it before, roasting a whole chicken can be intimidating. But stuffing a chicken is an easy way to add tremendous flavour to the whole bird. Roasting a stuffed whole chicken is also an economical way to make dinner for a crowd, plus you can use leftovers for a chicken broth.

Start by preheating the oven to 325°F (170°C), and make sure you have your stuffing prepared. Then, it’s really just as simple as preparing your favourite stuffing and placing it inside the chicken cavity, with enough room for steam to circulate (about ⅔ full). One of the best tricks of the trade when it comes to stuffing a chicken is to gently lift the skin away from the breast meat, creating an area where you can place herbed butter and bay leaves for delicious results.

Another tip when preparing a whole chicken is to bend the wings under the bird. This prevents them from burning. To keep everything in place while it cooks, wrap with chicken twine from top to tail, tying the legs neatly together.

Then, place the chicken in a large roasting pan surrounded with cubed vegetables (we suggest celery and potato), and some herbs such as rosemary and thyme. Cook it all together in the oven for 20-22 minutes per pound of chicken. Make sure to wash up well when handling raw chicken, including washing counters with warm soapy water and a cap of bleach.

Watch the video for a step-by-step tutorial of how to easily make a stuffed roast chicken. You can also brush up on your whole chicken carving skills with this tutorial, and really impress your friends and family at your next gathering!

What you’ll need:

• 1 roasting pan
• 1 roll of chicken twine
• 1 whole chicken
• 1 oz butter
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 box stuffing mix

This recipe comes to us from FDP team member Bri DeRosa, who first shared it on her Red, Round and Green blog. We always make two chickens when we have Sunday chicken — it seems like a lot, and it is, but it means that a) you’ll be prepared for unexpected guests; and b) you’ll have enough leftovers to make several lunches, or to pop into a whole second dinner (chicken pot pie, anyone?).  I also save the carcasses for making homemade chicken stock, so nothing goes to waste.

Ingredients

2 whole roasting chickens, approximately 4-5 pounds each
3 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, finely minced, or 1 tablespoon of garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste (remember to be relatively generous with the seasoning — you’re salting and peppering two whole chickens)

Optional: Herbs — fresh or dried — any combination you like. We often like dried herbs de provence in the wintertime; for fresh herbs, rosemary, thyme, parsley, fennel, and even basil or dill can be used. You’ll need a few tablespoons of minced fresh herbs, or one tablespoon of dried.

Something to stuff into the cavities of the birds — we usually quarter a lemon, an orange, and a whole onion (don’t bother peeling anything), and stuff the cavities with a mixture of the fruits and onion.

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Remove giblets from the cavities of the chickens.
3. Rinse inside and out with cold water, then dry thoroughly with paper towels.
4. Place them breast-up in a large roasting pan (or two smaller pans, if you don’t have a big one).
5. In a small bowl, combine the softened butter, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and herbs. I run my fingers between the skin and the meat of the chicken to loosen it, then rub half of the butter mixture under the chicken skins and half over the top of the chickens — the butter on the meat itself, locked under the skin, keeps the meat really juicy and flavors it nicely.Rubbing herb butter over the skins browns them well and makes the skin nice and crisp.
6. Stuff the cavities of the chickens with the lemons, oranges, and onions.
7. Roast the chickens at 400 degrees for about an hour and a half, depending on the size of the birds. The way I figure time for this is to take the average weight of one of the chickens (say, 4.5 lbs) and calculate 15 minutes per pound (that would be about 67 minutes for a 4.5 lb chicken). Then I round up — making it about an hour and 10 minutes for two 4.5 lb chickens.
8. After cooking, let the chickens rest on the countertop, covered with foil, for about 15 minutes prior to carving.

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