Curry-butter roast chicken, a melding of two favourites

How many chickens have I roasted in my lifetime? I tried to figure it out. I reckon we have about two a month, on average. That’s 24 a year. So, measuring only from the time when I started cooking regularly, as a young adult (things were a bit haphazard before then), let’s call that 50 years. Which amounts to 1,200 plump, delicious birds.

And this chicken was easily in the top two percent of all those chooks. Possibly higher.

It starts with mixing your own masala from equal quantities of a range of spices. These are then mixed into softened butter (not melted). Once the bird has been cleaned and dried, this compound butter is smeared all over the skin, as well as underneath the breast skin so that the flesh can absorb its colour and flavour.

You can then set the bird aside for those flavours to permeate the meat. If you like, prepare it in the morning, refrigerate it all day, and take it out to come to room temperature an hour before it is to go into the oven.

As for the temperature and cooking time, this is how it worked in my crotchety old gas oven: 90 minutes at 240°C. To the minute. With butter-basting along the way. But you might want to adapt that to suit your own oven’s temperament. I’d suggest not lower than 220°C.

Tony’s curry-butter roast chicken

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

1 large chicken, rinsed and dried

½ cup butter, at room temperature

Salt and black pepper

½ a tsp each of ground turmeric, cumin, coriander, ginger, fennel, cardamom, crushed garlic, chilli powder, white pepper and 1 tsp salt (all in powdered form)

Method

Rinse the bird and pat it dry, including mopping out the cavity with scrunched kitchen paper.

Season the cavity with salt and pepper.

In a small bowl, mix the butter with all the spices and salt.

Prise a finger under the breast skin and push it inside to loosen the skin from the breast flesh.

Spoon some of the compound butter under both sides of the breast and rub the skin on top to move it around.

Smear the remaining butter all over the skin, top and bottom. If you plan to roast the chicken later, refrigerate it in the meantime and remove it from the fridge an hour before it is to be roasted.

Preheat the oven to 240°C (be brave).

Place the bird in a lightly oiled roasting pan and roast for 90 minutes.

Every 20 minutes or so, remove it to spoon curry-butter over the skin, returning it swiftly back to the oven.

When 90 minutes in all has passed, turn the oven off, open the door, and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Carve and serve. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

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This dish is photographed on a platter by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.