Meals · Roasts, ribs & slow cooker

Whole roast chicken

Name: Whole roast chicken
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 80 min
Total time: 95 min
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients: 1 chicken (1.6 kg) whole chicken; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1 lemon lemon, halved; 1 head garlic, halved across; 1 1/2 tsp dried thyme; 1 tsp dried rosemary; 1 1/2 tsp salt; 1 1/2 tsp black pepper; 400 g gold potatoes, in chunks; 3 carrots mature carrots, in chunks

Lemon, garlic, herbs, a hot oven and root vegetables catching the juices underneath. It is the most popular recipe of the last decade at NYT Cooking and one of the highest-scoring dinners here — though which part of the bird you take changes that a lot, and the swap shows by how much.

Time: 95 min (15 prep + 80 cook)
Servings: 6
Per serving: 558 kcal
Protein: 52 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

1 chicken (1.6 kg) whole chicken1600 g
2 tbsp olive oil28 g
1 lemon lemon, halved60 g
1 head garlic, halved across30 g

Rub

1 1/2 tsp dried thyme3 g
1 tsp dried rosemary2 g
1 1/2 tsp salt8 g
1 1/2 tsp black pepper3 g

Underneath

400 g gold potatoes, in chunks400 g
3 carrots mature carrots, in chunks250 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Take the chicken out of the fridge an hour ahead and pat it very dry — dry skin is crisp skin, and nothing else you do matters as much.
Heat the oven to 220°C (425°F). Rub the bird with the oil, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper, and push the lemon and garlic halves into the cavity.
Scatter the potatoes and carrots in the tray and sit the chicken on top so the fat bastes them as it renders.
Roast 70–80 minutes, until the thigh juices run clear and a thermometer in the thickest part reads 74°C (165°F). Rest 15 minutes before carving, or the juices end up on the board.

Breast or thigh?

It matters more than the recipe does. Skinless breast is one of the highest-scoring foods in the database; thigh with skin is roughly half that. Same bird, same tray — the swap on the chicken line shows the size of the gap.

Why this score

solidly filling

No single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

38% of kcal

67% water

6 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 3349 kcal goes into the pot, 2384 g of ingredients comes out as ~1850 g of food → 181 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 181
Protein: (38%); 17 g
Fat: (49%); 10 g
Carbohydrates: (13%); 6 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 228 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More meals

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.