Roast Chicken 101

When you roast a whole chicken in the Anova Precision Oven, you’ll enjoy crispy skin and flavorful, juicy meat with no worry of over- or under-cooking. This low and slow recipe uses a dry brine and steamless sous vide cooking to hold onto precious chicken juices during cooking while keeping the skin from turning soggy. Then the powerful convection fan evenly browns the skin quickly without drying out the interior. Notes: You can use whole chickens of any size for this recipe; the total cooking time will change, but you do not need to modify any settings. This recipe calls for an overnight rest in the refrigerator after seasoning. This process, often called dry brining, helps to both season the bird and to dry out the skin. If you skip this step, you likely won’t be able to achieve fully crisp skin. This recipe works best when there’s some airflow underneath the chicken. The photos in this recipe show a perforated pan, which is now available to order through Anova. If you don't have one, placing a wire rack over a sheet pan works as a substitute. Using the settings below, a small chicken will gently glide into perfect doneness in a little more than 2 hours, but without any risk of overcooking. If you prefer to speed up cooking, you can increase the oven temperature to 163°F (73°C), which will reduce the cooking time to around 1 hour, depending on the size of the bird. In either case, remove the chicken when the probe reaches its target. This recipe produces chicken with very juicy meat. For a more traditional texture, increase the probe temperature to 155°F (68°C) and the oven temperature to 160°F (71°C). No matter your target temperature, you can keep the chicken warm for up to 3 hours before searing by dropping the oven temperature to 142°F (61°C). The oven may get smoky during the searing stage from drippings pyrolyzing, and that’s okay—it’s adding flavor back to the bird.