This was easily the juiciest chicken I've ever eaten. Brining will now be something I do as a matter of course. We made a compound butter with tarragon, basil, and oregano.

The only downside was on doneness. After 50 minutes, testing a thigh showed it needed more time. After 10 more minutes, the other thigh looked good. Unfortunately, while carving, we found other parts of the bird that were still pink, so I've still got some learning to do on when a chicken is fully cooked.

Hi Bill. Glad you enjoyed this delicious chicken. Equally glad you tried brining and now understand what a big difference this easy step can make to your final meal. Nice work.

As for cooking time, I'd strongly suggest from this point forward, that you always disregard cooking times published on ANY recipe. Everyone has a different ovens and everyone's oven is out be a few degrees (or more), making it impossible to judge doneness by published cooking times. In cooking school you are never allowed to ask the question, "how long". And if you do, you will always get the same answer - cook until it is done.

With this chicken, don't hesitate to turn it over, and cut into the meat in a couple of places (always the thickest part). And always make sure to rest it before eating. For a whole roast chicken, you can watch this Drill-down for how to test chicken:

http://rouxbe.com/drilldowns/83

Cheers, Joe

This was a great way to roast chicken. We brined a small free range organic chicken and just "eye-balled" a mix of tarragon, green onion and butter together to put under the skin. It was so moist and tender and made the best gravy. I had done a separate chicken stock reduction but just added that to the gravy. Yummy. I made the mistake of cutting out the bone before brining but that didn't seem to hurt it any. This will become a favourite way of roasting from now on.

This recipe calls for butterflying the chickens after the brine process. Will it make a difference if I butterfly the chickens before the brine process? Thank you.

No difference if you butterfly before you brine...go for it!

I realize the cooking time question is old, but this is very important, so I thought I would bump it for others who also might be wondering.

While the drill-down Joe posted is indeed useful to tell if the bird is under-done, it won't keep you from first cooking it to the point where it is overdone, which, in my experience, is more often the problem.

As Joe said, each oven is different. And, what is more, the temperature you set is an average temperature. Some ovens will stray much farther from that average temperature than others, meaning they will get much hotter or colder before their thermostats kick in to make a change. So, even if their average temperature is set at the target, they still might cook faster or slower than other ovens.

In short, time is a pretty useless thing to judge by; what takes an hour in the person who made the recipe's oven might take 45 minutes in yours, or an hour-and-a-half.

The only 100% reliable way to tell is to cook to temperature. The best way I have found to do this is with a probe thermometer, with which the probe goes in the meat, and the "brain" stays outside the oven, and sounds an alarm when the meat gets up to a preset temperature, which in the case of poultry is 165 degrees. The alarm goes off, you take the bird out, rest it for a few minutes, and voila, perfectly roasted bird.

The same, of course applies to beef roasts, pork roasts, and so on, although temperatures vary. Cook to temperature, though, and whatever you roast will always come out perfect.

There are also a cooking school lesson on How to Roast Chicken. Here you will find even more information about cooking and testing a chicken for doneness.

I didn't realise how much difference brining could make. As I am by my self and only like dark meat I though I would try using four thighs. I put them in the brine for an hour. As I am watching my weight I only rubbed the out side with olive oil.The results was unbeliable. I sonn will be 82 abd have been cooking as long as I can rember. So the saying that you never get to old to learn something new is so true

By Ruth .

For my first time brining, I experimented with two cornish hens. These were easy to butterfly with kitchen shears, and I used a compound butter I made with fresh shallots and dried thyme. Everything about this dish was delicious! The hens were so full of flavor! I can't wait to do this again, but with a larger, roasting chicken.