Thanksgiving roast chicken with herb butter

Making a Thanksgiving roast chicken has several advantages over turkey. It takes less time, less space, and is easier to cook without drying out.

Most chickens are between 3-5 pounds and will make 4-6 servings, perfect for a small crowd.

I've also partnered with my favorite source of sustainable meat, Seven Sons Farms, for Thanksgiving. I wanted to help make your meal more affordable when budgets are tight, while also introducing you to a really great source of humanely-raised meat.

Get a free chicken (and more!) with a big discount they are letting me offer my readers for the month of November. The information is after the recipe card, and I hope you take them up on it and give them a try.

Jump to:

• Recipe
• Thanksgiving roast chicken with herb butter
• Thanksgiving serving size
• What kind of chicken to buy
• Get a free chicken for Thanksgiving!
• Tricks for roast chicken
• Seasoning under the skin
• Gravy options
• More Thanksgiving recipes

Recipe

Thanksgiving serving size

First, let's start off with how much actual meat is on a roast chicken. You can assume 60% of the weight of a raw chicken is meat, and you'll get about twice as much white meat as dark meat. The meat also loses about 25% of its weight as water is cooked out of it.

This means that a 3 pound chicken has about 1.8 pounds of meat when raw, but only 1.3 pounds after it is cooked.

A serving is generally considered to be 3-4 ounces, which is actually pretty modest for a big meal like Thanksgiving. Let's assume 6 ounces (which doesn't include leftovers).

If you assume 6 ounce servings, you can do an easy calculation: take the weight of the bird, and add one. That's your number of servings. As you can see in the chart below.

Weight of whole chicken	Cooked meat	Servings
3 pounds	1.3 lbs (21 ounces)	3-4
4 pounds	1.8 lbs (29 ounces)	5
5 pounds	2.25 lbs (36 ounces)	6
Two 3-lb chickens	2.6 lbs (42 ounces)	7

Planning for leftovers

To plan for leftovers, first ask yourself how many leftover servings do you want? Add that to your number of guest servings, and that's how much you should cook.

However, I also suggest you set some chicken aside as soon as you carve it up. Put it in the fridge - out of sight. One thing that happens is if there isn't much left of a dish, people will "take one for the team" and help finish it. I see this happen all of the time when it doesn't look like enough to save (and I'm easily on that team when it comes to sweet potatoes and green bean casseroles).

Alternatively, make a lot extra. You can always freeze it, add it to a stew, make turkey croquettes, the list goes on.

Adding extra chicken

If you don't have the space to roast multiple chickens for Thanksgiving, you can also cook a few extra chicken breasts, thighs, or legs. Boneless chicken breasts are easier to carve up, but also easier to dry out.

Any of these chicken pieces can cook at any oven temperature - I know it's hard to juggle side dishes in the oven at Thanksgiving.

• A really hot oven will roast the chicken pieces faster, crisp up the skin, but dry them out easier (especially chicken breasts).
• A cooler oven (350°F), will take longer but be less likely to dry out the meat. Skin probably won't crisp up.

Here are some estimated cooking times based on your oven temperature.

Chicken	Cook time at 425-450°F	Cook time at 350°F
Boneless chicken breasts	15-20 min (often dries out)	25-35 min
Bone-in chicken breasts	25-30 min	35-45 min
Bone-in thighs	20-25 min	35-45 min
Drumsticks (legs)	20-25 min	35-45 min

What kind of chicken to buy

I like to treat Thanksgiving guests to fancy ingredients they might not always try for themselves. Heritage, sustainable turkeys are expensive and it's hard for pay that much, even for me (someone who spends too much on fancy food!). These types of turkeys usually start at over $100.

However, chickens are much more affordable. Sure, the sustainable ones that are actually raised in open pastures are still pretty pricey. But worth it! After buying a whole chicken for $3 (on sale) at a large grocery chain and chewing through the spongiest texture I've ever encountered, I was fed up. Since then, I buy almost all of my meat from a sustainable farm for the better quality and healthier profile.

I've sourced my meat from Seven Sons farms since 2022. They are a family-run farm that treats the animals, land, and community with respect. Their pasture-raised chickens (and their little homes) are moved daily to follow behind the grazing cattle. (They like to eat the bugs that are exposed in the dirt from all of the cow hoof marks).

Check out this article if you're interested in learning more about sustainable meat's benefits and costs.

Get a free chicken for Thanksgiving!

I wanted my readers to be able to try Seven Sons Farms chickens for Thanksgiving. I know they are more expensive and budgets are tight these days. So I reached out to them asking if we could partner for a discount. Not only did they agree, they over delivered!

They are letting me pass along a $35 discount, in addition to a $20 coupon for your first order for a total of $55 off! There's a $99 order minimum (since they have to ship with cold packs), but that takes your $99 order down to $45! There are no tricky subscriptions or catches - just a family run business trying to provide quality meat (and a little blogger trying to help make your Thanksgiving tasty).

This only lasts through the end of November, and you have to use my link to create your account. You'll see the $20 off promo on signup, and the cart subtotal won't show the full discount until checkout. But when you go to checkout you'll see both the $20 and $35 discounts.

I do get a small commission if you buy something, but I promise this is a farm I really believe in (and spend money at). Here's a screenshot for the last year's worth of my orders, usually spending $250+ per order and throwing the meat in my freezer.

If you're looking for other meat to fill your cart, here are some of my recommendations:

• Bacon-infused burgers (beef or bison)
• Pork shoulder (also good for Thanksgiving)
• Heritage ham (it's super flavorful and perfect for Christmas!)
• Spicy sausage (it smells divine while cooking and tastes even better - I can't go back to regular grocery brands now)
• Boneless pork chops (used in this Jagerschnitzel recipe and this pork chops & peaches recipe)

Tricks for roast chicken

First of all, I've found roasting a whole chicken results in more succulent meat than the individual parts. But even with that, there are a few tricks to making your Thanksgiving roast chicken perfect.

• Oven temperatures - to crisp skin while not overcooking the chicken
• Preheated skillet - to more evenly cook the dark meat
• Butter-herb rub - for flavor and juiciness

Oven temperatures for roasting

A hot oven crisps the skin of the chicken really well, but typically hot ovens dry out meat faster, especially lean meat. A few things help keep the moisture in:

• Chicken skin: the skin acts as a barrier for evaporation from the meat
• Butter: rubbing the chicken with fat also adds a protective layer
• Preheated skillet: this starts cooking the dark meat sooner so it can reach a higher temperature before the breasts overcook.

The other thing I do in this recipe, which was a tip from Cooks Illustrated, is to lower the temperature (to 350°F) part way through cooking. This lets the rest of the meat cook more gently, preventing it from drying out.

Also make sure to place your leave-in thermometer in the center of one of the chicken breasts while it roasts. Here's a video clip queued up for proper placement. Thermometers are essential to a perfectly roasted chicken for Thanksgiving - cooking just a couple extra minutes can increase the temperature by 5 degrees, and cooking for an 5 minutes can increase the temperature by 10 degrees, drying out your chicken.

Preheated skillet

This is a simple trick if you have a skillet to spare. Cast iron works the best because it can retain a lot of heat. Why does this matter?

The dark meat needs to get to a higher temperature than the chicken breasts in order to be tender and juicy. While the breasts only need to get to 160°F, chicken thighs and drumsticks need to get to 165°F to be safe, but 185°F for the best texture.

How do you get the thighs and drumsticks to cook faster? Put them on the preheated skillet for a heat boost while the whole chicken roasts. That's why the recipe instructs you to put the chicken breast-side-up in the pan, so all of the dark meat is touching (or really close) to the cast iron skillet.

Butter-herb rub

This rub adds flavor and helps keep the chicken juicy. Some of the flavor penetrates the meat, but it is subtle. That's why most people make a pan gravy with the drippings, although you can make a very flavorful one without as well (that also uses butter and herbs - see the gravy section below).

Seasoning under the skin

If you've never rubbed spices under the skin before roasting a chicken, this section is for you. Otherwise, skim past it, as I don't expect to have any unique tips to share.

Get under the skin

Butter and herbs will melt off the top of the skin and won't penetrate to the meat. That's why you want to get the herb butter under the skin.

There's an easy spot to get under the skin - it's where the legs come together at the bottom of the breasts. You can get your fingers under the skin on each breast, while leaving it attached at the center breast bone (like the sternum).

You can also find an opening for the thighs and drumsticks near the same spot, on the bottom of the thigh.

Rub butter on top of the skin

Once you've rubbed the butter under the skin, add a light coating to the top of the skin. This will add a ton of flavor and give it a nice golden color.

That's it, you've done it!

Gravy options

The pan drippings for this recipe will have some extra fat from the butter rub. It will be infused with tasty herbs, but you'll want to skim off most of the fat before using the dripping in a gravy.

If you're new to making gravy, let me assure you, it's actually quite easy. Here's a 1 minute video from the NY Times. And if you end up with lumps, don't fret, just run it through a strainer at the end.

Alternatively, I have a gravy that can be made ahead of time, using butter and herbs. Make extra herb butter (or use the stuff you set aside), and add it to the pan when sauteing the shallots. Then follow the recipe as instructed, omitting the herb part later on.

More Thanksgiving recipes

I found some other Thanksgiving roast chicken recipes that might be of interest:

• Cutting up a whole chicken into pieces, from American Home Cook
• Roast chicken with maple butter and rosemary from NYTimes Cooking (but as some commenters point out, preheat the skillet even though the instructions didn't mention it).
• A reddit post on how to make roast chicken Thanksgiving-y, from adding sage to presentation ideas.

I also have everything you need for green bean casseroles:

And for homemade cranberry sauce

And some Thanksgiving menu ideas to check out.