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Roast Chicken With Cumin, Honey and Orange
![Roast Chicken With Cumin, Honey and Orange](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/12/dining/Roast-Chicken-With-Cumin-Honey-And-Orange/Roast-Chicken-With-Cumin-Honey-And-Orange-articleLarge-v3.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- 1 hour
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- ½cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- ½cup honey
- 1tablespoon ground cumin
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 13-pound chicken, giblets and excess fat removed
Preparation
- Step 1
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Use a nonstick roasting pan, or line a roasting pan with a double layer of aluminum foil. Combine orange juice, honey, cumin, salt and pepper in bowl, and whisk until smooth. Place chicken in pan, and spoon all but ¼ cup of liquid over all of it.
- Step 2
Place chicken in oven, legs first, and roast for 10 minutes. Spoon accumulated juices back over chicken, reverse pan back to front, and return to oven. Repeat four times, basting every 10 minutes and switching pan position each time. If chicken browns too quickly, lower heat a bit. If juices dry up, use reserved liquid and 1 or 2 tablespoons of water or orange juice.
- Step 3
After 50 minutes of roasting, insert an instant-read thermometer into a thigh; when it reads 155 to 165 degrees, remove chicken from oven, and baste one final time. Let rest 5 minutes before serving.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
Roasted over a bed of large-cut carrots, celery, onion; the vegetables braised in the liquid, without leaving anything dry. Fabulous.
When Meyer lemons are in season, I do a variation of this recipe using the juice squeezed from a couple of them instead of orange juice. I also stuff the cavity with the squeezed lemon rinds and a couple of carrots and some sweet yellow onion chopped into large pieces. Amazing flavor!
This is a killer combination of flavors. I spatchcocked my chicken and roasted it over some carrots and about a quarter of an onion. I had a lot of the basting liquid left in the bottom of the roasting pan, so I poured it off and reduced it down, mounted it with butter, and had a delightful sauce.
I lightly oiled my pan and also put down a layer of carrots, parsnips, onions, potatoes, and garlic, the larger vegetables cut into about 1" cubes. 3 lb. D'Artagnan chicken over them, basted with half of a juiced orange, TBSP honey, and cumin, salt, and lots of pepper. 40 minutes chicken perfectly cooked, gorgeously browned. Roasted veggies another 10 min. as chicken rested and put it all over couscous. Wonderful flavor.
Foil on the bottom of the pan is an absolute necessity or you will spend the rest of your life trying to get the charred sauce scraped off. It felt a little unusual to add cumin but the chicken was tasty, juicy and looked so tempting.
I did this with whole chicken legs at 375 for just under an hour. Very, very successful. Wonderful juices.
How to spatchcock a chicken:
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/videos/techniques/how-spatchcock-chicken-video
I took the advice from other readers and spatchcocked the chicken. Excellent tip, chicken cooked more quickly and was very juicy. I also used cayenne, not black, pepper, and served the chicken with lots of rice and a salad. No complaints!
400 degrees too hot to start with the honey based liquid - charred in various areas within 20 minutes. Punched up flavor with chipotle pepper, but still a bit too bland overall for me. May try my own variation next time.
Anyone baking with a sugary sauce using honey or brown sugar, I highly recommend using an Emile Henry glazed ceramic baking dish (had mine since 1996). Cleanup is always a breeze after a brief soaking. Nothing sticks. No need to line wih foil. Amazing product.
I started cooking the chicken at 375F for 30mins and then covered it. Let it get a lot of liquid and then uncover it, baste the bird very well and put it back in and leave it for another 10 minutes and turn it down to 350. After 10 minutes baste the bird again then put it back in the oven for another 10 or so minutes while it browns. Make sure to flip it over and brown the inside of the bird and also bass the bird to.
I am still looking for that elusive 3# chicken that all your recipes talk about. I know they’re available at farmer’s markets, but there’s a large segment of the population that doesn’t live walking distance from one and has to rely on supermarkets for chicken where they are 4# and above. The blissful hope of having a fully cooked whole chicken in 1 hour was once again dashed, even when I allowed an extra 1/2 hour. It did give me time for a pre-dinner cocktail, which always softens the blow.
Delicious! It does make a bit of a mess so I was glad I used a thick layer of aluminum foil, as suggested in the recipe. But the result is a beautifully browned chicken with unexpected flavor notes from the honey and cumin.
Wow, people, how can there be so many different opinions on this simple recipe? I made it last night for company and everyone raved. Only two changes: one commenter thought the marinade might be a little sweet so I added a bit of lemon juice and used only half the honey. The high points on the bird did start to get really brown halfway through, so I reduced the oven temp to 375 and tented the dark parts. Turned out lovely, moist and delish. Guests loved the marinade served over rice pilaf.
Four hundred degrees not a good idea. Quickly revealed that chicken is essentially made of carbon. Would have had to stand in front of the oven the whole cooking time. Next chicken, I'll do Melissa Clark's 325 degree approach.
I used cumin, coriander, mint and cinnamon instead of just cumin.... Splendid.
Love this recipe. Used frozen orange juice vs bottled and frozen without water is better.
This is a delicious recipe, however, it is quite time consuming and labor-intensive. The bird was in the oven for an hour, and every ten minutes, I needed to pull it out of the oven and baste it. I sliced up a lonely yam that was sitting in the fridge and I put the sliced yam under the bird, along with a big handful of baby carrots. The meal was delicious, the color was spectacular and the food was hearty. We ended up eating later than expected, however, because it takes so much time.
Didn't think we would like this at first because cumin is so strong, but it is really, really good! I've made it several times and we always love it.
I was disappointed; my husband, who prefers boneless skinless breasts, really loved it. The one change that I made was to replace the honey with molasses, as that's what was in the house. I liked the smokiness it added, but overall was not impressed. The basting flavors overpowered the chicken and resulted in a more steamed texture than the way I prefer a roasted chicken, which is simply to allow the flavor of the chicken itself shine. Thomas Keller's method is still the best.
Used a 4 lb. bird, the smallest I could find. To compensate for the extra size, I used the convection oven at 400 degrees, for the same 50 minutes as suggested for 3 lbs. The skin was clearly caramelizing too fast, so I reduced to 350 for the final 20 minutes, and tented with foil. The meat was fully cooked (the thermometer registered 170), but it is clear that one runs the risk of so much honey scorching. BTW, the meat was perfectly moist and tasted fine.
400 degrees is way too hot, the orange juice evaporates and then the honey burns. Even 375 is too high, 325 is better. It might be better to reduce the orange juice honey over low heat on the stove before putting on the chicken, otherwise it just ends up on the bottom of the roasting pan.
Not sure what I’m doing wrong here… Have tried twice; once with orange, once with Meyer lemons. Halved the chicken. Cooked at 400 until cooked through. Bought cumin the same day the second time. Both times: wonderfully moist, nice browning, but kinda bland. Do I need a specific honey? A specific type of orange? More cumin? Maybe I’ll try The Splendid Table’s version, even if longer.
Try frozen orange juice without water and marinate for at least six hours. Save drippings for sauce. Lower temp, 325 to 350
More cumin or mine was too old
I also roasted the chicken over onions, carrots and potatoes. Delicious.
I combined one of my favourite regulars with this one, stuffed two halves with the usual butter, thin garlic slices and rosemary twigs under the skin. From the comments to this recipe, I added small onion quarters to the cavity, along with the usual garlic and lemon quarts. Sprinkled whole cumin and coarse salt in the oven dish, and ground cumin on top. Slow-cooked at 90x (200F)for 3 hours, and then ADDED this recipe, covering the chicken with the liquid and finished off 50 min, at 180c (350F)
400 too hot add coriander and cinnamon serve with mint and cilantro
I’ve put truffle honey add coriander powder and I made a more dense sauce to use later, boiling the sauce advanced at the end.
Easy recipe with spectacular results - I added some Brussels sprouts and carrots for the last 30 minutes and it turned out great!
This is fantastic, and so easy. The colour of the roast chicken alone is amazing. I didn’t get any discernible cumin taste, I’ll have to add more the next time. I put shallots in the pan juice ten minutes from the end and they added a lot. 10 /10 for this one.
I zested the orange with a microplane and added the zest to the sauce mix, using only half the honey. I laid the bird over small halved potatoes, celery, onion and baby carrots. I was working with a bird over 5 lbs., so I spatchcocked it and cut through the shoulder and leg joints to speed up the cooking. Even so, it took over 2 hours. I had to cover the bird with foil to prevent the skin from burning. The sauce came out very nice.
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