The Simplest Whole Roasted Chicken = The Simplest One-Pan Dinner
What’s easier than a roast chicken recipe? How about a roast chicken recipe that includes a cabbage in the roasting pan—or, in this case, skillet—so that when you pull that roast chicken out of the oven you don’t just have a gorgeous bird, you’ve got an entire, healthy, one-pan supper? If you’ve lived your whole life without roasting a bird, it’s not too late to learn. Few things compare to the ease and luxury of offering your friends and family a whole bird on a weeknight. This particular skillet roasted chicken is one of our very favorite chicken recipes—it’s so simple, and it (brilliantly) uses the delicious juices that drip out of the spatchcocked chicken as it roasts to season and braise the bed of shredded cabbage underneath the chicken. Efficiency, tidy, beautiful, this is a dinner that almost makes itself. In other words, a weeknight cook’s dream.
Wait, A 3-Ingredient Dinner? That’s Actually Delicious?!
Yep! Give us olive oil and salt for free—that seems fair right?—and you’ve got yourself a three-ingredient recipe! The whole chicken is the workhorse here—or should we say work-chicken? You see, a spatchcocked chicken in a cast iron skillet in the oven gets crispy skin on the outside, juicy-tender on the inside. It’s perfection. Because it’s spatchcocked, you can be certain that it’s going to cook really evenly. Cabbage is a perfect partner, it really soaks up all the drippings.
- A whole spatchcocked chicken
- A head of cabbage
- Taco seasoning
How To Make Skillet Roasted Chicken
Our goal with this chicken recipe was to create maximum chicken surface area to cover the cabbage as it roasts in the oven. Basically, you should think of the spatchcocked chicken as a blanket cooking your shredded cabbage to perfection. If “spatchcocking” is not a term you’re familiar with, fear not! Spatchcocking a chicken is not an advanced cooking technique and you can learn how to do it in our How to Spatchcock a Chicken article.
If you want to turn this one pan dinner into something a little heartier, mix some cubed potatoes in with the cabbage and let the chicken drippings do their work.
Here’s how to cook chicken in a cast iron skillet:
- Spatchcock the chicken! Or, if you have a very nice butcher, ask them to do it for you.
- Put the shredded cabbage in large cast iron skillet.
- Drizzle with olive oil and salt.
- Lay the spatchcocked chicken on top.
- Sprinkle a bunch of taco seasoning all over that chicken!
- Roast! It’ll take about an hour, but the best way to check for doneness is to watch for an internal temperature of 165°F.
Tools You’ll Need
- Cast iron skillet, braiser or Dutch oven
- Kitchen shears (for spatchcocking)
- Sharp knife
- Meat thermometer
More Wonderful Ways to Cook a Whole Chicken
We recently realized that there’s a part of our brain that autofills a picture of a whole roast chicken when someone says the word “dinner”. The two ideas are just sort of synonymous, right? Here are four more terrific whole chicken recipes to try:
One Pan Dinners, To The Rescue!
We hope you’re as into this recipe as we are, and that it saves you some fuss at dinnertime, too. If you make it, let us know how you like it! Share a photo and tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so that we can see your stuff! Happy eating!
