Oven baked chicken with lemon

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

You need a fair amount of salt and pepper to rub into the chicken, so I do that first in a small bowl.

Take the lemon and squeeze it a few times and/or roll your hands with a lot of force on your counter to bruise the inside. Take something with which you can prick the lemon and perforate the lemon all around! Prick 20 to 30 holes (fork is the fastest)

Clean the chicken, rinse the inside well. Dry the chicken on the outside. Spread/sprinkle the salt/pepper mixture generously on the inside of the chicken evenly and then the outside. Pepper and salt should be everywhere and rub it in a little.

Place the lemon in the chicken and try to close the 2 openings (neck and butt) as well as possible with the skewer or toothpicks (as little air as possible should be able to escape).

As you can see in the photo, the binding did not go well here (small chicken compared to (too) large lemon), but that does not affect the taste.

Place the chicken breast-side up in the roasting pan. Do not add any butter or oil, the chicken will roast in its own fat! and will not stick to the roasting pan.

Place in the middle of the oven.

After 15 minutes, carefully turn the chicken over so that the skin remains intact. If you have sealed the chicken well on both sides, the skin will puff up like a balloon (looks nice!).

Let the chicken roast for another 20 minutes at the same temperature.

After 20 minutes, turn the oven down to 200 degrees and let the chicken roast in the oven for another 15 minutes.

Remove the chicken from the oven and carefully (without poking it) remove the lemon from the chicken.

Voila, a delicious, crispy and tender chicken!

Serve in the roasting pan, the juices in the roasting pan are also very tasty!

We often put peeled and chopped potatoes around the chicken in the roasting pan (stir occasionally)! Super tasty!