Chicken with roasted grapes is a perfect fall recipe while grapes are in season. I like to use a mix of the varieties available, roasting green, red, and black seedless grapes with a whole chicken.

With this recipe, you'll slather a honey-herb butter under the chicken skin. The chicken gets stuffed with an apple and then roasted in the oven on top of a bed of grapes.

Between the honey in the herb-butter, the apple, and the grapes, a sticky, fruity sugar drips into the bottom of the pan. Those sweetened pan drippings turn into the most incredible pecan gravy.

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Recipe
Chicken with roasted grapes & honey-herb butter
Roasted grapes
Roasting chicken
Butter under the chicken skin
Gravy for chicken
More recipes & resources

Recipe

Chicken with roasted grapes & honey-herb butter

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Prep Time15

Total Time1

Calories436

Servings 8-ounce servings of chicken

The recipe looks long. It is not very fussy, promise. I wanted to make it very detailed, so it is easy to follow and not leave you wondering about a certain step.

Ingredients

Honey herb butter

2 sprigs rosemary finely chopped
2 sprigs sage finely chopped
2 sprigs thyme
1 tablespoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoon butter softened
2 tablespoon pecans finely chopped

Chicken & roasted grapes

1 3-4 lb chicken air chilled
1 apple quartered
3 lb grapes see note

Pecan gravy

2 tablespoon pan drippings from chicken
2 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoon pecans chopped
1 cup chicken broth or drippings

Instructions

Preheat oven & prep

Preheat your oven to 400.
In an oven-safe skillet, place the grapes all along the bottom (leave stems on).
Finely chop the herbs. Chop 4 tablespoon of pecans (half will be stuffed into the chicken with the herb honey butter, and half will be reserved for the gravy).

Honey herb butter

Mix together all of the ingredients, reserving a couple pinches of salt (soft butter makes this easy).
2 sprigs rosemary, 2 sprigs sage, 2 sprigs thyme, 1 tablespoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper, 1 tablespoon honey, 3 tablespoon butter, 2 tablespoon pecans
Set aside several pinches of salt and pepper in a side dish (so you can grab it when your hands are covered in chicken guts).

Prep & stuff the chicken

DIRTY HANDS! Grab a bunch of paper towels and set them aside. Open your compost or garbage. You about about to dive into chicken gut territory and I am trying to save you from washing your hands 5 times during this process.
Make sure your herb honey butter, apple quarters, and the salt+pepper you set aside are accessible and won't be contaminating anything else with your chicken-hands. If you are using a leave-in thermometer, get that ready too.
CLEAN & DRY CHICKEN: Remove any giblets or bags of guts from the chicken. Discard or save for another use.
Dry the breast-side of the chicken with a paper towel - this helps get a crispy skin.
1 3-4 lb chicken
SPREAD HERB HONEY BUTTER: Take half of the butter mixture and spread it under the skin of one breast of the chicken and into the leg if you can reach it. Repeat with the other half of the chicken.
STUFF & DRY CHICKEN: Stuff the apple quarters into the chicken cavity. Then dry the chicken breast skin one more time. Get that good & dry!
1 apple
SALT THE SKIN: Grab the bowl with reserved salt & pepper and sprinkle it on top of the skin.
Place the chicken on top of the grapes, breast side up. If you are using a leave-in thermometer, place that in now.
Now you can wash your hands!
3 lb grapes

Roast chicken & grapes

Cook the chicken in the 400-degree oven until it reaches about 140 degrees with a thermometer. THEN turn off the oven and let the chicken finish cooking until it reaches 160-165.
This method lets the chicken finish cooking a little more slowly, reducing the risk of over-cooking and drying out.

Make the gravy

After the chicken is done cooking, remove the pan from the oven. Set the chicken aside to cool. Put the grapes in a bowl.
Remove all but 2 tablespoon of fatty pan drippings. Put the pan (that the chicken roasted in), on a burner over medium heat. Add in 2 tablespoon of flour and whisk to incorporate with the fat.
2 tablespoon pan drippings from chicken, 2 tablespoon flour
Continue to whisk and cook until the flour smells cooked (a little toasted smell).
Then add in the chicken broth (or not-super-fatty drippings), about ¼ cup at a time. Whisk until fully incorporated. Do not pour it all in at once - this makes it much more likely to get a clumpy gravy.
1 cup chicken broth or drippings
Once the gravy is the desired consistency, add in the pecans and cook for a few minutes.
2 tablespoon pecans

Serve

Slice up the chicken and serve with grapes and gravy.

Notes

I encourage you to use different types of grapes so that each bite is different. Even though grapes come kind of pre-packaged in those bags, they are sold by the pound. That means you can take 1-2 bunches of grapes, instead of the whole bag, allowing you to mix and match without buying a TON of grapes.

Nutrition is calculated based on a 3 pound whole chicken that yields about 2 pounds of cooked meat.

Nutrition

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Roasted grapes

Grapes are widely available at grocery stores all year, but they are in season from US farmers in fall. While they are in season, you can find some interesting varieties and they tend to be more flavorful as well.

Choosing grapes

To find the freshest grapes, shake the bunch - the grapes should be firmly attached to the stem and not fall off. Also, the greener the stem, the fresher they are (or at least, the better they were stored).

Grapes: everything you need to know

Grape season starts in June and lasts through November, sometimes a little longer. Get tips on picking the best varieties and their flavor differences

Grape seasonality guide

To keep things interesting, I buy several varieties of grapes. Between red, green, and dark purple grapes, the flavors are all noticeably different. That adds a nice complexity to the dinner - each bite might have a different grape.

Even though grapes are sold in those sort-of prepackaged bags, they are likely sold by the pound. If they are, you can take a bunch or two out, and only purchase a small amount (not a whole bag). That allows you to buy 3 different varieties without drowning in grapes. I like to go with 6 large bunches.

Red grapes

As you can see from the photo above, red grapes do lose some of their color when roasted. It can look unappetizing, but when making this recipe for just me and family, I include the red grapes.

If people are coming over, I either exclude the red grapes or toss them in toward the end to preserve some of their color. They don't get as soft when added at the end, but that can add textural variety to the dinner - so it's a win-win.

Use up those grapes

I usually make these sweet potatoes with this chicken that I top with the roasted grapes and then drizzle (ok... drench) in honey. If I still have grapes leftover, I use them in chicken salad or on this steak-farro salad (that cooks up in no time!)

Whole chicken roasted in a pan in the oven

Roasting chicken

There are a lot of ways to roast a whole chicken and this recipe is easily adaptable to your favorite cooking method. The grapes can withstand high roasting temperatures, long roasting times, but will still soften if roasting at lower temperatures too.

I like to roast chicken based on a method I first discovered from Cook's Illustrated.

Preheat a cast iron or oven-safe skillet in the oven
Cook chicken until it's almost done
Turn off oven, and let chicken finish cooking without opening the oven door

First, a cast iron or other oven-safe skillet is preheated in the oven. This is helpful because you place the chicken, legs down, into the hot skillet. That gives the legs a jump start on cooking, which are usually slower to reach the target temperature.

The chicken is roasted in a hot, 400ºF oven until it is almost done cooking. When the internal temperature reaches 140ºF (20 degrees before the target temperature of 160ºF), turn the oven off.

Let the chicken stay in the hot oven to finish cooking to 160ºF. This reduces the chances that it overcooks and dries out. It also lets the outside of the chicken surface cool slightly (reducing moisture evaporation), while letting internal temperatures to continue to rise.

It's very important to use a leave-in thermometer, so you don't lose heat by opening the oven door to check on it. You also want to make sure the thermometer is placed well to get accurate temperate readings.

Raw, whole chicken before roasting in the oven.

Butter under the chicken skin

If you've never buttered under the chicken skin, it can seem intimidating. But it's not!

You can loosen the chicken skin with your fingers, and then rub the honey herb butter under the skin. It adds so much flavor to the meat, drips into the pan for really flavorful gravy, and makes the skin crunchy and delicious.

Here's a 3-minute video from LetsFeast demonstrating how to butter under chicken skin.

Gravy for chicken

Gravy is another skill that can be unapproachable, especially if you're tried in the past and failed. We've all been there, but don't worry.

Once you learn the technique, you'll realize how easy it is and won't even need a recipe (I mean that!)

Start with hot, melted fat (butter, pan drippings, bacon grease, etc)
Whisk in an equal amount of flour until smooth
Add liquid (broth, etc), a small amount at a time until the desired consistency

These steps need to be done in order because of how the flour and fat interact in the beginning. And the most important part is to add the liquid a little bit at a time.

When you add only a small amount of liquid, the flour absorbs it. If it's added all at once, the flour clumps and floats around in a pool. But when added slowly, magic happens and it makes a super smooth gravy.

On that note, don't add more flour at the end to thicken in, because it will clump and float. If you need to thicken it, just cooked it longer.

This video from Weary Chef shows each step and what the gravy looks like, from lumpy to smooth, and how it absorbs the liquid.

More recipes & resources

I really enjoy recipes with roasted grapes - I think it brings out an interesting flavor that we don't get when snacking on them straight from the fridge. I have some other roasted grape recipes for you to try, along with other oven roasted recipes.