Jonathan Waxman’s Roast Chicken Recipe (2024)

The chicken itself was delicious - simple as the recipe is.
BUT: 1. The chicken doesn't brown enough to really make the skin crispy, and
2. The sauce uses 1 cup of EVO (makes it excessively oily) when 1/2 cup is more than enough. The hand chopped herbs don't absorb the oil which separates immediately! If you blend the sauce and add some grated lemon peel the sauce becomes much better in terms of its relationship to the delicious chicken!

How do you "cut out the backbone of the chicken"? How do you "cut out the breastbone"?

I was told to NEVER wash chicken.

The recipe calls for "removing the bones" from the anchovy fillets. Who does that? They're so tiny and imperceptible!

If you can't get to Barbuto this is pretty close! My chicken took much longer than 35 minutes, perhaps all that opening the oven for the basting is to blame! and the skin didn't really brown the way I would want it-perhaps the skin needs to be left out to dry more. My salsa verde was delicious- I suggest adding the oil in small amounts in order to not over do it-mine was a bit oilier than I remember it being in the restaurant. Start with the best chicken you can get

Correct. Never wash chicken. It does nothing for the chicken and opens up the possibility of contaminating the sink, faucet, counter as micro droplets of water bounce off. Cooking the chicken to a safe internal temp handles potential pathogens. Washing it does not.

I combined the Zuni Cafe roast chicken recipe with this one to get an incredibly crisp crust. I tucked a little butter under the breast skin along with the rosemary for moisture. Zuni's recipe calls for flipping so the skin is up, then down, then up for a final crisping. The result was utterly delicious, moist, and near perfect. However, the skin pulled away from the meat so on the final skin-up turn, too much meat was exposed. Next try I will skip the skin-down and see how it goes.

Didn't have Meyer lemons. Used regular lemons and it still came out good. Also added onions and it was good.

Disagree. The herbs are readily available in any number of grocery stores (Houston) and I grow several in my planter (alas, apartment living). Doesn't mean you have to use all of them, and maybe some aren't available year around in your area, but this is not a "restaurant recipe" and to say so is misleading.

This recipe looks delicious, but would require the purchase of arugula, fresh basil, fresh cilantro, fresh tarragon, fresh chives, fresh sage and fresh rosemary. The only item on the list of herbs that I typically have on hand is the fresh parsley. For the home cook, this is an extremely expensive meal.

Some of you say that herbs are an expensive one time use ingredient. I beg to differ. Did you know that herbs freeze very well or they can be dried out on the counter and then stored in (glass) jars? Herbs are expensive? Not if you grow them they aren’t. The only thing I don’t grow is arugula but it’s pretty inexpensive in any event. As for the chicken taking too long to cook I’d suggest using a cast iron pan. I don’t cook chicken in anything else since it heats up so quickly and well.

Add onions to the roasting pan as well.

Actually... this is even more helpful

I prepared this for a dinner party and it was fabulous. I took previous advice and reduced the amount of olive oil to 1/2 to 2/3 cup on the dressing. Also, rather than using a whole chicken I used chicken breasts and thighs with skin and bone and baked at 425 for the 35 minutes. It was done to perfection. Paired it with the Spring Vegetables with Bagna Cauda dressing and a good loaf of Italian bread.

i'm also a home cook, but i always have parsley, cilantro, arugula and rosemary or thyme on hand. for parsley/cilantro an entire bunch at the store is 99 cents. at home trim the ends and put them in a cup w water. put the plastic produce bag over the whole thing and twist it around so it balloons over the leafy tops. stick it in the fridge itll last almost a month. stems & woody herbs i don't use up go in a big tupperware i keep in the freezer for scraps to make chicken stock with.

The important herbs here are parsley and arugula. Everything else is optional, so don’t worry about the extensive list of herbs. As for the chicken, it won’t brown at 425. Cook it at 450.

Discovered this recipe after listening to an interview with Jonathan Waxman and ended up buying the cookbook. For those having trouble with an “oily” salsa verde: The cookbook calls for 2 3/4 cups greens/herbs to 1 cup oil. The NYT reduced the greens/herbs considerably but forgot to scale back the oil.

The salsa is simple and fantastic. You could use it with lots and lots of different proteins, perhaps varying proportions of the herbs as appropriate.The crime of this recipe is that it doesn’t proffer any explicit instructions concerning the lemon and the pan drippings. Squeeze the roasted lemons over the chicken before serving. And then, in the name of all that is holy, scrape up every last drop of lemony smaltz from the pan and put it on your plate. This is not optional.

If you watch Waxman’s YouTube video making this he chops everything on a cutting board, transfers to a bowl and streams in ‘about 1/2 cup of olive oil’. Additions he made that weren’t in this recipe is 1/2 lemon juiced, handful of green onions white parts only, and mint.

This was really good but no surprise considering the pedigree of the chef. Because its split and cooked at high for a short time it comes out very moist and the jus is delicious drizzled over top. I fired up the broiler for a few minutes at the end just to crisp the skin up a little.

This recipe is the classic “write whatever Chef says”. NO ONE pulls bones out of anchovies! Nobody should be washing a chicken unless you killed it yourself. And…I doubt any of us are going to muck about with a mortal and pestle, chuck it all in a cuisinart, pulse and let’s all get on which our lives.

Followed instructions exactly but breast was overdone/dry while thighs/legs were perfect and juicy. A $25 3.8 pound organic chicken wasted. Cutting the back and breastbone took me a good ten minutes, so negligible "time saved", and you have to stop other dinner prep every ten minutes to baste. Julia Child's roast chicken with the lemon in the cavity yields moister breast meat and better browned skin and is less prep work and attention demanding.

Salso Verde Too much trouble for what it does for the dish

I saute the chicken halves(after seasoning with salt and pepper), high heat for 10 minutes on each side, ending with the skin side up, in an oven proof skillet. Then add some white wine instead of lemon, to the skillet, sprinkle chicken fresh rosemary and fresh minced garlic. I preheat to 500 F then turn down to 300 and roast chicken for an approx an hour being careful not to over cook. I get a crispy skin and juicy insides this way . A cup of olive oil is over kill for the sauce.

if the chicken is dry, it should brown and crisp. You can enhance this by salting the exterior.

Does “2 anchovy fillets” mean one whole anchovy, which you soak and then bone into two fillets? Or two whole fish, filleted?

In Jonathan Waxman’s restaurant kitchen this dish is cooked at 500 degrees.

This was very good. I used salsa verde left over from another NYT recipe (tuna sandwiches, delicious). I cooked the chicken in accordance with the recipe, on a rimmed baking sheet, and basted two or three times. We sreved it with garlic mashed potatoes. Yummy.I appreciate the plight of big city cooks with tiny kitchens. If you think ahead a little bit, you can make use of your fresh herbs, and have very little waste.

The chicken is okay —nothing too different here; your favorite roast chicken recipe would be just as good— But the salsa verde is sublime!I’ve served it with grilled chicken breasts, on top of pasta, etc. freezes well too, just like a pesto, so make a double batch.

We loved this! We used the large organic chicken half breasts that are available here. I grow all the herbs but chives in my garden but substituted mint for the arugala, a neighbor has Meyer lemons, so of course the gathering of ingredients made it taste even better. A bulb baster would have helped. The sauce wasn't at all oily and no flavor was predominant. The roasted lemon was an eye opener; a delicious garnish.