Nigella Lawson's simple roast chicken recipe so good you'll make it 'over and over'

A recipe you just bung in the oven, this slow roasted garlic and lemon chicken is a real showstopper and the perfect Sunday roast recipe.

Nigella Lawson has shared a roast recipe that's so delicious, she guarantees you'll be eager to make it time and again.

The dish is not only mouth-watering but also "gloriously easy" due to its slow-cooking method, allowing for a hands-off approach to getting a roast on the dinner table.

The chicken is infused with flavours of caramelised lemon slices, garlic, and thyme, creating an aroma that will make your home smell divine. Nigella reveals that her inspiration came from traditional French chicken casseroles featuring whole cloves of garlic.

Nigella writes: "This is one of those recipes you just can't make once: that's to say, after the first time, you're hooked. It is gloriously easy: you just put everything in the roasting dish and leave it to cook in the oven, pervading the house, at any time of year, with the summer scent of lemon and thyme - and of course, mellow, almost honeyed garlic."

They lemon is the star here and is transformed in the cooking process. She further explains: "The wonderful thing about it is that you turn the lemon from being a flavouring to being a major player; left in chunks to cook slowly in the oven they seem almost to caramelise and you can eat them, skin, pith and all, their sour bitterness sweetened in the heat."

To prepare this dish, simply mix the ingredients together, cover with foil and cook at a low heat to intensify the flavours. After two hours, you'll be tempted to eat it straight from the roasting tin, reports the Express.

Slow roasted garlic and lemon chicken

This recipe serves four to six people.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken (approx. 2.25kg / 4½lbs) cut into 10 pieces
• 1 bulb of garlic (separated into unpeeled cloves)
• 2 unwaxed lemons (preferably thin-skinned) - cut into chunky eighths
• 1 handful fresh thyme
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 150 millilitres white wine
• black pepper
• 1 teaspoon Maldon sea salt flakes or ½ teaspoon fine flowing salt

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140C Fan/gas mark 3/325F.
2. Put the chicken pieces into a roasting tin and add the garlic cloves, lemon chunks and the thyme; just roughly pull the leaves off the stalks, leaving some intact for strewing over later.
3. Add the oil and using your hands mix everything together, then spread the mixture out, making sure all the chicken pieces are skin side up.
4. Sprinkle over the white wine and grind on some pepper and sprinkle over the sea salt flakes, then cover tightly with foil and put in the oven to cook, at flavour-intensifyingly low heat, for two hours.
5. Remove the foil from the roasting tin, and turn up the oven to 200C/180C Fan/gas mark 6/400F.
6. Cook the uncovered chicken for another 30-45 minutes, by which time the skin on the meat will have turned golden brown and the lemons will have begun to scorch and caramelise at the edges.
7. I like to serve this as it is, straight from the roasting tin: so just strew with your remaining thyme and dole out.

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