I’ve been writing in our Women in Hunting Series about my love of hunting and wild harvesting the majority of the meat we eat throughout the year. The meat we wild harvest is primarily red meat. We hunt for grouse during archery season but we never harvest enough to last throughout the year. This means that when I get a craving for white meat like chicken, I have to head to the grocery store since we currently don’t have a good space for raising chickens.
I love a good roast chicken. The best part about taking the time to roast a chicken is all the additional meals you get out of that one chicken: chicken broth, chicken salad, and chicken tetrazzini are my three favorites to make after I make a roast chicken.
I’ve written in this post and this post about how much we love to cook in dutch ovens. Roast chicken in a dutch oven actually cooked faster than our gas powered oven in our kitchen. The chicken came out juicy, flavorful and had a nice light browning on the outer meat.
This recipe is very simple yet amazingly delicious. The lemon baked inside the chicken infuses the meat and broth with a light citrus flavor. The gravy I made from the chicken juices in the pan even had a light citrus taste and made our homemade mashed potatoes the best I’ve had in a long time!
Simple Lemon Roast Chicken
1 chicken with neck and gizzards removed from inner cavity
1 medium size lemon
olive oil
salt
fresh cracked pepper
Rinse out inner cavity of chicken and make sure it is fully thawed. We prefer to make our roast chicken without the skin so I always remove most of the skin before baking. If you enjoy eating the skin you can leave it on.
Place the chicken in a large dutch oven (our largest is a 14″) on a small wire rack. This helps to prevent the chicken from burning on the bottom of the pan. Rub the chicken with olive oil and then lightly sprinkle with salt and fresh cracked pepper. Chop the lemon into chunks and place in the inner cavity of the chicken.
Place lid on dutch oven. Place dutch oven on top of 15-18 charcoal briquettes and 24-28 briquettes on top of the lid. Ours finished baking in one hour but if yours needs to bake longer than an hour replenish the charcoal with fresh coals.
It is done when it reaches 170 degrees by testing with a cooking thermometer. It was so flavorful and delicious!
You can also make this recipe in a standard oven. Bake the chicken at 400 degrees for an hour or until it reaches 170 degrees.
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This looks so good, dear! Just pinned & tweeted this!
P.S. I have a whole chicken in my freezer now. Think I know what I am going to do with it now. 😉
Thanks Carrie, hope you love it as much as we do
Now that’s a nice looking bird. Thanks for sharing it on foodie friday.
Thanks for hosting a great link up
Yum! We eat roast chicken at least 3 times a month so I’m definitely trying this! Thanks for linking up at Pin It Link Party!
Love dutch oven cooking! This looks wonderful!
Yay, another dutch oven cooker! There aren’t too many of us so always glad to connect with someone else who loves cooking in dutch ovens
It was fun to hear how you cooked it in a dutch oven. We live in suburbia so we don’t get to cook like that, but really enjoy hearing about it…maybe we’ll attempt it sometime. We can have an open fire as long as we cook over it! Thanks for sharing!
Visiting from Natural Living Link-Up. Blessings, Nancy from livininthegreen.blogspot.com
That’s so interesting about the open fire rules in your area! I guess we take it for granted here in Montana that we can have open fires whenever we want as long as it is not in the middle of a dry summer forest fire restriction!
I Love lemon chicken. I am definitely going to have to try this.
Yael from Home Garden Diggers
Hope you enjoy it, we just ate some more of the chicken in a meal this week that I had frozen and it is SO yummy
Wow, this is another addition to my roasted chicken recipe. Thanks a lot. hey Annie, can I ask you if you have recipe using a holy basil(tulsi tea) herb as a recipe for roasted chicken? Can you give me some advice on this one?
I don’t have a lot of experience cooking a chicken with herbs since we love ours nice and simple so can’t help you there
We make an herb roasted turkey breast in our dutch ovens and just sprinkle a few herbs on the turkey when we bake it so that may be similar. I think the key is to not use too much so that it is overpowering. I’m sure you could google it and find some tips, good luck 
I know this has to be so juicy by the way you prepared it. Awesome Annie!
I was amazed the first time we made it just how juicy it was! In the past when I tried roasting a chicken I had put it in a baking dish and tried to cover it in tin foil but it didn’t turn out as well. By cooking it in a dutch oven with a tight fitting lid it helps to hold in all the moisture and it turns out so delicious!
Hi Annie,
Your Chicken looks awesome, the lemon keeps it moist and gives it a great flavor. Hope you are having a great weekend and thank you so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday.
Come Back Soon!
Miz Helen
This sounds wonderful! Thank you for sharing with Simple Meals Friday! I hope you join us again this week!