Sunday Night Roast Chicken with Herb Butter
This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure policy.
From Laurie David’s book, The Family Dinner, this roast chicken is a great dish for creating cozy family moments around the table.
This roast chicken comes from Laurie David’s cookbook, The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time. The book is so much more than just a collection of interesting recipes — though there are many by co-author Kirstin Uhrenholdt — it’s an inspirational guide to making dinnertime a special ritual in your home.
David, best known as the producer of An Inconvenient Truth and ex-wife of Seinfeld creator Larry David, understands that dinnertime is not always easy: life is busy, kids are antsy or texting, husbands are distracted, and a meal that takes two hours to prepare is inhaled in less than ten minutes.
To help, she offers lots of recipes and fun ideas like theme nights, table games and conversation starters to make dinner fun and encourage families to linger at the table. She also shares traditions and candid stories from her own parenting journey—from babies to teenagers to divorce—and shows how the simple ritual of dinner kept everyone connected and together through it all. I’m a big fan of hers (and her ex) and loved how the book felt like chatting over coffee at her kitchen table.
If you take only a few ideas from the book, I think you’ll find it worthwhile. For me, the “aha moment” was the chapter on gratitude. I realized that dinner is not just about the food—you need rituals to set the tone. Taking a moment to appreciate the meal and people around us helps us disconnect from our busy lives and ease into quality family time. And it doesn’t have to be religious. David offers pages of suggestions, from prayers to quotations to funny childhood poems (my kids liked the old camp blessing, “Rub a Dub Dub, Thanks for the Grub, Yea God!”)—mix it up, come up with your own, whatever works for you.
To be honest, I loved the message of this book so much that I didn’t even care about the recipes, but I tried and few and, to my delight, they were delicious. I felt this one for Sunday Night Roast Chicken really captured the essence of the book, which is about creating cozy moments for your family around the dinner table. Try serving it with my Parmesan Smashed Potatoes and Roasted Carrots with Thyme. Enjoy!
You can purchase The Family Dinner Book here.
Note: I’ve taken some liberties in adapting this recipe. The original version calls for a whole chicken, but I prefer a cut-up chicken instead because it’s much easier to serve. I’ve also made some minor changes to the ingredients and method, but the finished product is pretty much the same. If your grocery store carries a “Poultry Blend” herb mixture, buy that–it contains all the herbs you’ll need.
You may also like
- Peruvian-Style Roast Chicken with Green Sauce
- Sweet & Spicy Roast Chicken with Carrots, Dates & Pistachios
- Chicken Cordon Bleu
- Chicken Marbella
Sunday Night Roast Chicken with Herb Butter
From Laurie David’s book, The Family Dinner, this roast chicken is a great dish for creating cozy family moments around the table.
Ingredients
For the Herb Butter
- 5 3-inch sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 3-inch sprig fresh rosemary
- 5 fresh sage leaves
- 1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
For the Chicken
- 6 shallots, peeled and halved
- 1 whole head garlic, clean, unpeeled and cut in half horizontally
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 chicken, 4 – 4 ½ pounds, cut into pieces (or 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts)
- Herb butter (above)
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
For the Sauce
- 2 cups low sodium chicken broth
- 1½ tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450°F.
- Make the herb butter: Pull herbs from the stems and chop finely. Combine the chopped herbs, shallots, lemon zest, honey and butter in small bowl and blend well. Set aside.
- Place the shallots and garlic in a roasting pan and toss with the olive oil (it's okay if the garlic breaks apart a bit). Pat the chicken VERY dry with paper towels (this will help the skin to crisp) and place in the roasting pan; do not crowd. Use a soup spoon to rub the herb butter all over the chicken and under the skin too (if you don't eat the skin, rub a lot of it underneath!). Sprinkle the kosher salt evenly all over the chicken and season with fresh pepper to your liking. Place the chicken in the oven and roast for 35-40 minutes, or until the skin is golden brown. Turn the heat down to 375 degrees; continue to roast for 15-20 minutes more, or until done. Chicken should be done in less than an hour; do not overcook.
- Transfer the chicken and the shallots to serving platter to rest and cover with foil. Discard the garlic. Pour off all the fat, leaving the brown baked-on bits in the bottom of the roasting pan. Add the chicken broth and place on the stove over high heat; bring to a boil and whisk in Dijon mustard. Using whisk or wooden spoon, stir up and combine the brown bits with the broth and continue to cook until the liquid is reduced by half, 5-8 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the butter. Pour the sauce into a gravy boat and serve alongside chicken. (If you want to get fancy, you can strain the gravy but I never bother.)
Pair with
Nutrition Information
Powered by 
- Calories: 1,237
- Fat: 85 g
- Saturated fat: 28 g
- Carbohydrates: 27 g
- Sugar: 10 g
- Fiber: 5 g
- Protein: 91 g1
- Sodium: 1,376 mg
- Cholesterol: 371 mg
This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated through an online nutritional calculator, Edamam.com. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
See more recipes:
Comments
Add a Comment
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Hi Jennifer, As soon as I put my chicken in the oven, butter started burning and smoked up the whole house! I had to take it out and finish it on a stove top. Any ideas on what went wrong? Thanks!
Hi Alisa, sorry to hear you had a problem with this. Did you place the chicken on a rack that was centered in the oven? The immediate smoking makes me think that the chicken was too close to the heating element.
Thanks for yet another delicious recipe! Make this last night for Rosh Hashanah, great way to kick off the New Year!
I make several of your recipes a week and made this for the first time tonight. It was fantastic! My husband loved it and he is picky…sigh…I even messed up the herb butter and couldn’t find sage. It was still delicious. My husband used the garlic from the pan to spread on a baguette. I didn’t even bother to make the gravy, but I will next tine. Served it with your make ahead mashed potatoes and thyme carrots.
Absolutely Amazing, did not change a thing, and my pickier little guy loved it!
I definitely recommend this recipe.
Made this for Christmas Eve dinner. The flavor was great but I was disappointed that the chicken turned out a bit rubbery and I wanted your comment on what I did wrong. Here is what I did:
– followed recipe using 6 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. The pan was a bit crowded with breasts snuggled next to each other.
– for the initial roasting at 425 also had pan of carrots in oven for the Curried Carrot recipe.
– I roasted for 35 min at 425 and then 15 min at 375. When I pulled out the temp of thickest part was 175 degrees.
– chicken rested for 15 min before serving.
Looking forward to your thoughts.
Correction to my question…..initial roasting temp was 450 degrees, not 425 degrees.
Hi Janice, Glad you enjoyed the chicken but sorry it turned out a bit rubbery. It doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong with the cooking process, but I’m surprised they reached 175 that quickly. Were they particularly small chicken breasts? The ideal temperature for chicken is 165, so it sounds like they were a bit overcooked.
Hye there! Any substitute for dijon mustard? Can normal mustard sauce do?
I don’t recommend normal mustard, Natasha – sorry! I’d just leave the Dijon out if you don’t have it. Hope that helps!
This was delish and filled the house with a wonderful aroma. My family came from all corners asking, “when’s dinner?”. I had to omit the garlic due to an allergy, so I added extra shallots and a quartered onion. We will definitely make it again.
Delicious. I used bone in breast and two quarter legs. As usual, a great recipe and made the entire house smell awesome. I paired with roasted garnet yams and your beet and goat cheese salad. Can’t wait for leftovers tomorrow- maybe all the ingredients on a bed of brown rice or quinoa. (Chicken, goat cheese, salad dressing, beets and yams.)
My kids are learning how to cook so this is the first roast chicken recipe my 16 year old attempted (while I peeled and chopped the root veggies we roasted along side the chicken). The chicken we roasted was appx. 10 lbs, so it took nearly 60 min in our convection oven. My son followed the directions as written. There is enough chicken left to make chicken soup. I’m talking two adults and two teenagers. We all went back for seconds. My son’s comment after first bite: “I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but this is *amazing*”. Given the amount of food we put away tonight, we all concur. We skipped making gravy and included the drippings in with the leftovers as it simmers for tomorrow’s lunch. I can only imagine how good the chicken soup we have tomorrow will taste.
Thank you, Jenn!
HI Jenn, I love your recipes and have tried many. My only issue if there is one, is cooking any chicken skin period. I understand it adds flavor and keeps meat moist underneath and all but I can’t get myself around it. Is there anything us non chicken skin eaters can do to still make a good Sunday night roasted chicken?
Hi Luanne, Glad you like the recipes! I would prepare the chicken with the skin on (as it holds in moisture when roasting) and remove the skin before serving. When applying the herb butter, rub a lot of it underneath the skin so you get lots of that flavor.