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Lamb Family Estate

Easy BBQ Whole Roast Chicken

A ridiculously easy whole roast chicken coated in BBQ sauce and a little mayo, then roasted over carrots, onions and garlic in chicken bone broth. The BBQ gets sticky and caramelized, the mayo helps create an incredibly juicy, beautifully browned chicken, and the vegetables cook right in all those pan juices.
Print Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 5 minutes
Resting Time 10 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 25 minutes
Servings: 6 Servings
Course: Dinner
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

Chicken
  • 1 whole chicken about 4 lb / 1.8 kg
  • 1 cup about 240 g BBQ sauce
  • ¼ cup about 55 g mayonnaise
  • Salt and black pepper to taste*
Vegetable Bed
  • 6 –8 carrots peeled and cut into large pieces
  • 1 large yellow onion quartered
  • 2 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 1 cup chicken bone broth
  • *If your BBQ sauce is particularly salty go easy on additional salt.

Equipment

  • Large casserole or roasting dish
  • Cutting board
  • Chef's knife
  • Measuring cups
  • Paper towels
  • Instant-read meat thermometer

Method
 

Preheat the oven.
  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F.
Build the vegetable bed.
  1. Arrange the carrots, onion and garlic across the bottom of a large casserole or roasting dish.
  2. Pour 1 cup chicken bone broth around the vegetables.
Prep the chicken.
  1. Pat the chicken thoroughly dry with paper towels and place it breast-side up directly on top of the vegetables.
  2. Carefully loosen the skin over the breasts with your fingers without tearing it.
Add the BBQ sauce.
  1. Coat the chicken with 1 cup BBQ sauce, making sure to work plenty of sauce under the skin and directly onto the meat.
Now add the mayo.
  1. Spoon ¼ cup mayonnaise over the BBQ-coated chicken and use your hands or the back of a spoon to rub it across the exterior, letting it mix with the BBQ sauce as you go.
  2. And yes—BBQ first, mayo second.
  3. Could you mix them together in a bowl beforehand? Probably.
  4. Is that what I do? No.
  5. Something about rubbing the mayo into the BBQ sauce after it's already on the chicken just works, so I'm not messing with it.
Roast.
  1. Roast uncovered at 400°F for about 45 minutes.
  2. Increase the oven temperature to 425°F and continue roasting for approximately 15–20 minutes, until the BBQ coating is dark, sticky and caramelized and the chicken is cooked through.
  3. Use an instant-read thermometer to verify doneness rather than relying solely on time. Check the thickest portions of the chicken without touching bone.
Rest.
  1. Let the chicken rest for approximately 10 minutes before carving.
Serve.
  1. Serve with the roasted carrots and onions and spoon some of those BBQ-chicken pan juices over everything.

Notes

Why mayonnaise?

There's actually some food science behind your accidental genius here.
Mayonnaise is mostly oil plus egg, so you're adding a thin layer of fat and emulsifiers to the surface of the chicken. That helps distribute the BBQ coating and promotes browning while protecting the surface from drying out.
But there's an important distinction: the mayo isn't magically making the inside of the chicken juicy. Proper cooking and resting are doing most of that work. What the mayo does particularly well is create a rich, clingy coating that works beautifully with BBQ sauce.
And because you put BBQ sauce under the skin, you're getting flavor directly against the breast meat instead of having all the flavor sitting on the exterior.

Use your favorite BBQ sauce

This recipe will change depending on your sauce—and that's a feature, not a problem.
Sweet sauce = sweeter, stickier roast.
Smoky sauce = deeper BBQ flavor.
Spicy sauce = spicy chicken.
Use the one you actually like.

Watch the BBQ sauce during the final roast

BBQ sauces can contain quite a bit of sugar, so they can go from beautifully caramelized to “well, that's charcoal” faster than a normal herb-roasted chicken.
Once you increase the temperature to 425°F, keep an eye on it. If the exterior is getting too dark before the chicken is done, loosely tent the darkest areas with foil.

Homemade bone broth

I use homemade chicken bone broth from my Weekly Roast because there's almost always some in my freezer. Regular chicken broth or stock works perfectly well too.

Save the carcass — with an asterisk

Normally I immediately turn my Weekly Roast carcass into my regular chicken bone broth.
This one is different.
The leftover BBQ sauce can give the resulting broth a little sweetness and smokiness. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I just wouldn't automatically mix it into a batch of neutral, all-purpose broth.
Make a separate batch and use it somewhere those flavors actually belong.
Like, say... Smoky Pumpkin Beer Chili.