By Melissa Clark
Updated Feb. 28, 2024
- Total Time
- 1½ hours, plus at least 4 hours' marinating
- Rating
- 5(330)
- Notes
- Read community notes
This whole chicken cooked on the grill is truly a best-of-both-worlds recipe: You get the incredibly succulent meat and brittle-crisp, burnished skin of a roast chicken, combined with the deep smoky flavor of the grill. To make it, you essentially use your grill like an outdoor oven, cooking a whole splayed chicken in a skillet instead of directly on the grill grate. Splaying the bird first — that is, flattening the legs so they lay flat in the skillet — helps the dark meat cook quickly and evenly. The skillet helps to distribute the heat and captures the juices, which would otherwise incinerate in the fire. Those juices are then put to good use as a cooking medium for dill-flecked, garlicky spinach. The greens absorb all of the chicken drippings before being heaped upon ricotta-smeared crostini. Added bonus: You don’t have to worry about setting off your smoke detector. Here, the smoke stays in the grill with the bird, which is exactly where you want it.
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Ingredients
Yield:4 servings
- 2teaspoons kosher salt, more as needed
- ½teaspoon black pepper
- ¼teaspoon high-quality chile powder (ancho or New Mexican are nice)
- Finely grated zest of 1 lemon (save the zested lemon to juice over the crostini)
- 1whole chicken (3½ to 4 pounds), patted dry
- Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed
- 2garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 2anchovies (optional)
- Pinch red pepper flakes
- 1pound mature spinach leaves, cleaned (12 cups)
- 1cup chopped dill
- 4slices crusty country-style bread, ½-inch thick
- Fresh ricotta, for serving
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (4 servings)
856 calories; 57 grams fat; 16 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 25 grams monounsaturated fat; 11 grams polyunsaturated fat; 22 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 3 grams sugars; 63 grams protein; 1420 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
Step
1
In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper, chile powder and lemon zest. Rub the chicken inside and out with salt mixture. Place chicken on a rack set over a baking pan to catch any drips, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.
Step
2
Heat a gas grill, or light a charcoal grill for indirect heat (meaning pile the coals on one side of the gill, leaving the other side empty).
Step
3
Place a cast-iron skillet on the grate directly over the coals. Cover the grill, and let the pan heat up for 10 minutes.
Step
4
Remove chicken from the refrigerator. Use a sharp knife to cut the skin connecting the legs to the rest of the body. Use your hands to splay the thighs open until you feel the joint pop.
Step
5
Rub chicken with oil and place it breast side down in the hot skillet. Cover grill and cook 5 to 7 minutes, until the breast is seared and golden and easily releases from the pan.
Step
6
Using tongs and a spatula for balance, carefully flip chicken and cover the grill again. Continue cooking until the underside of the chicken is starting to brown, 10 to 20 minutes. Make sure the skin doesn’t get too dark; it will continue to brown even as it cooks over indirect heat. You’re looking for a medium golden color here, a shade or two lighter than what you ultimately want it to look like.
Step
7
Move the skillet over to the unlit side of the charcoal grill, or turn off the burners on your gas grill that are underneath the pan. Cover grill and continue to cook until the bird is cooked through, 10 to 25 minutes longer. An instant-read thermometer should register 155 degrees in the breast. You’ll need to keep your eye on the grill heat as you cook. If you’ve got a thermometer on your grill cover, you’re looking for it to be at about 450 degrees. If it falls below 400 degrees or seems as if it’s not hot enough (i.e., your chicken is cooking too slowly), add more coals or turn up your burners. Use your intuition here.
Step
8
Transfer chicken from the skillet to a cutting board, and tent with foil to rest.
Step
9
Throw garlic, anchovies (if desired) and red pepper flakes into the skillet and cook, uncovered, until the garlic starts to sizzle and turn golden, about 20 seconds. Toss in spinach and dill and cook, stirring with your tongs, until just wilted, 2 minutes longer. If the spinach isn't wilting quickly, push the pan back over the flame to direct heat. Season with salt.
Step
10
Place bread slices on grill and cook until lightly charred, about 1 minute per side.
Step
11
To serve, drizzle toasts with oil and slather with ricotta. Top with spinach mix and a little lemon juice. Serve alongside sliced chicken.
Ratings
5
out of 5
330
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Cooking Notes
Bob Johnston
Never rely on the built in lid thermometer. The are notoriously inaccurate and can be off as much as 50 degrees. Stick with intuition (or even better, a remote sensor thermometer) and an good instant read thermometer for final doneness of meat.
Ellie
Seriously one of the best chickens I have made. And we sauteed spinach in the drippings. It was spectacular. Actually made me decide to save chicken fat next time I make stock or soup. Because I suspect that potatoes cooked in that fat will transport us to Paris and the chickens cooked outside the butcher shops where the potatoes at the bottom bask in the chicken drippings. YUM.
Jenn
I can honestly say this is one of the best new recipes I've tried in quite a while. It's my new favorite way to roast a chicken. Used a charcoal grill and the timing was spot on. I also can't believe I have never made anything with spinach and dill...what a magic combiniation!
Thank you Melissa!!
Kwp
An easy way to flip the chicken is to put on oven mitts then cover them with plastic bags to keep the mitts clean, and just grab the ends of the legs to flip and later to put on on the cutting board.
Hut
For a family that doesn't care much for chicken skin, we scarfed this down.
Suggestions: Since the raw chicken was already on a cutting board for the herb rub, I went ahead and cut the leg joint open. This had the added benefit of exposing the thigh flesh to receive the herb rub and to slide some rub under the breast skin.
As a charcoal user, I found that heating the skillet stovetop while coals were heating worked well. As for the greens, even mystery bags from the freezer were tasty.
NanceG
One of our household favorites of all time - and I'm making it AGAIN for guests tomorrow evening.
Always a huge hit .. but just for fun, we play the Melissa Clark video on How-To before our guests are served, then announce "and this is what you'll be having for dinner". THEN the trouble begins. Guests are SO charmed by Melissa that they want to watch more videos (even the folks that don't cook at all) and we have to practically drag them to the dinner table.
NanceG
Kathryn -
Another option is to grill chicken thighs only. I find this is ideal when I'm serving a table full of guests. Everyone gets equal portions; easy to serve; faster cooking time = more time with guests.
DRC423
Outstanding, produced a smoky, flavorful bird with crispy skin and wonderful flavor. I thought my smaller Weber charcoal grill wouldn't hold enough heat, but it did. After an hour the bird wasn't finished, so it spent the last 15 minutes out of the pan and over the coals; this seemed to reinvigorate the coals and helped finish the chicken. One change: I added some unpeeled garlic cloves to the "roasting" pan, and I squeezed the resulting garlic goo onto the crostini toast ahead of the ricotta.
Rotmanpr
It remains a family favourite. Easy and just right every time. And you can cook just about any veg in the remaining chicken fat. Tonight it was Brussels sprouts. Worked great.
Terry
Delicious
Kristen
This was bomb. Added half a jar of anchovies with their oil to the chicken fat for the spinach, and the toast was divine.
allison
This recipe is perfect! One of my all time favorites
Jean Chatzky
I've been making this recipe for a while -- in my oven (winter) as well as on the grill. And instead of just popping the legs out, I spatchco*ck it. It takes a cast iron pan that's a little larger (I use a 12 inch one) but it cooks much more quickly. A delicious recipe overall.
Kristen
I usually do this with chard and no dill. Otherwise exactly as written. Fabulous.
Kaitlin Y.
This chicken is the real deal. One of the best chickens I’ve ever made, and it was a joy to cook it outside on a hot summer’s day.
Annette Rachlin
Very easy, but breast skin stuck to skilletnexttime I’ll add butter to the skillet a minute irtwo before I add chicken.
Jack Flynn
If you use anchovy in the spinach, go light on salt; don't skimp on lemon juice when finishing the spinach, to cut the salty taste. Use a hot chile powder and hot crushed red pepper. 450 degrees on a gas grill and 155 degrees breast temp came out perfect.
Lee
Splaying the chicken and all that turning is completely unnecessary. Just preheat the pan for 10 min, then add the chicken. Move the pan to cool side, turn it so the legs face the coals, cover the grill and cook undisturbed for 35-45. Use butter instead of olive oil for the rub because olive oil has too low of a smoke point and turns carcinogenic at high heat. It also makes a crisper skin. Cheers!
17StMartins
Greasy and unlikeable
Kathleen
So... I’ve done this chicken numerous times on the grill, sometimes with the whole bird and others with thighs. I’m thinking that the rub would be great as a dry rub for an oven roasted Thanksgiving turkey, either as written or subbing thyme and sage for the chili powder. Thoughts?
Kwp
An easy way to flip the chicken is to put on oven mitts then cover them with plastic bags to keep the mitts clean, and just grab the ends of the legs to flip and later to put on on the cutting board.
Southerner
Have made this at least 4 times. Used an all natural chicken. Absolutely the best chicken I have ever eaten! Have never let it sit with the rub for more than hour! Cooked at room temperature. Used Swiss chard instead of spinach, ate over rice. Thank you Melissa!
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