original recipe posting:

The USDA says that an internal temp of 165 F is sufficient to kill pathogens and viruses, so 180 is a bit of overkill.
Roasting chicken is one of those allegedly simple tasks which a lot of cooks can't do right. Here's a great recipe from Marcella Hazan's 'Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking' which is foolproof and absolutely delicious:
If this were a still life its title could be "Chicken with Two Lemons." That is all that there is in it. No fat to cook with, no basting to do, no stuffing to prepare, no condiments except for salt and pepper. After you put the chicken in the oven you turn it just once. The bird, its two lemons, and the oven do all the rest. Again and again, through the years, I met people who come up to me to say, "I have made your chicken with two lemons and it is the most amazingly simple recipe, the juiciest, best-tasting chicken I have ever had." And you know, it is perfectly true.
For 4 servings
Ingredients
# A 3- to 4-pound chicken
# Salt
# Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
# 2 rather small lemons
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Wash the chicken thoroughly in cold water, both inside and out. Remove all the bits of fat hanging loose. Let the bird sit for about 10 minutes on a slightly tilted plate to let all the water drain out of it. Pat it thoroughly dry all over with cloth or paper towels.
3. Sprinkle a generous amount of salt and black pepper on the chicken, rubbing it with your fingers over all its body and into its cavity.
4. Wash the lemons in cold water and dry them with a towel. Soften each lemon by placing it on a counter and rolling it back and forth as you put firm downward pressure on it with the palm of your hand. Puncture the lemons in at least 20 places each, using a sturdy round toothpick, a trussing needle, a sharp-pointed fork, or similar implement.
5. Place both lemons in the birds cavity. Close up the opening with toothpicks or with trussing needle and string. Close it well, but dont make an absolutely airtight job of it because the chicken may burst. Run kitchen string from one leg to the other, tying it at both knuckle ends. Leave the legs in their natural position without pulling them tight. If the skin is unbroken, the chicken will puff up as it cooks, and the string serves only to keep the thighs from spreading apart and splitting the skin.
6. Put the chicken into a roasting pan, breast facing down. Do not add cooking fat of any kind. This bird is self-basting, so you need not fear it will stick to the pan. Place it in the upper third of the preheated oven. After 30 minutes, turn the chicken over to have the breast face up. When turning it, try not to puncture the skin. If kept intact, the chicken will swell like a balloon, which makes for an arresting presentation at the table later. Do not worry too much about it, however, because even if it fails to swell, the flavor will not be affected.
7. Cook for another 30 to 35 minutes, then turn the oven thermostat up to 400 degrees, and cook for an additional 20 minutes. Calculate between 20 and 25 minutes total cooking time for each pound. There is no need to turn the chicken again.
8. Whether your bird has puffed up or not, bring it to the table whole and leave the lemons inside until it is carved and opened. The juices that run out are perfectly delicious. Be sure to spoon them over the chicken slices. The lemons will have shriveled up, but they still contain some juice; do not squeeze them, they may squirt.
Ahead-of-time note: If you want to eat it while it is warm, plan to have it the moment it comes out of the oven. If there are leftovers, they will be very tasty cold, kept moist with some of the cooking juices and eaten not straight out of the refrigerator, but at room temperature.

Any way of roasting a chicken will cause the skin to puff...IF the skin is unbroken and the cavity well closed. There is nothing magical about the lemons making it puff. But the chances of finding a chicken with an unbroken skin are very very slim these days of mass produced food.
Linda C

thanks linda.

it wasn't that i minded that it didn't puff, i was just expecting it.

boy was this good eating!

maryanne

i made arley's chicken a few weeks back and posted at the time, how simple and simply good the chicken was. mine didn't puff up either and i think linda is right. it would have been kind of fun if it had, but at least dinner and the leftovers were good!

I've made that recipe maybe a dozen times and the skin gets poofy maybe a third of the time.

As you noticed, it doesn't affect the flavor if it doesn't poof up. Still tastes great. Now if you can find a free range chicken or other non-mass-market bird, it'll be fabuloso...but even regular old supermarket birds taste good with this recipe.

I've never made anything out of Marcella Hazan's book (Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking) that wasn't wonderful. As another example, if you're in the mood for a pork roast, get a Boston Butt and follow the directions in the link.

The recipe is amazing; pork, milk, a little butter, salt and pepper. That's it. The transformation seems almost magical. Wonderfully juicy, tasty, flavorful.

Here is a link that might be useful: pork loin braised in milk