Your Best Roast Chicken

This dish calls for a low-maintenence trip to the grocery store.

The butter should be soft but pliable.

Merrill starts making her way under the skin of the bird. Take your time -- the skin just needs to loosen from the meat and there's no hurrying it.

Merrill makes progress -- looks like she's pulling up the chicken's shirt.

After the butter, you slip in some sliced shallot.

"Merrill, you missed a spot." "Mind your own beeswax."

If you're persistent like Merrill, you can even reach all the way up to the chicken's drumsticks and slip some butter in there, too.

Merrill seasons the bird while Amanda lines up chives like only true virgos can do.

Amanda makes the herb butter, by mashing softened butter with chopped parsley, chives and salt. Monkeymom says you can use other herbs, as well. We'd think about rosemary and thyme.

Amanda dropped the butter onto a sheet of plastic wrap, then began forming it into a log.

Voila!

The bird then loses all its dignity as it's placed atop the tube pan. Then into the oven it goes and that's that!

This is what happens when you're so busy chatting that you forget you left the instant-read thermometer in the chicken. Guess the chicken is done...?

Red miso: it's really more of a brown color.

You slowly blend the miso with mirin.

As timWunotWoo explains, it should be the consistency of a thick gravy.

The marinade goes inside the chicken as well as coating the outside -- a detail we love.

A small visitor watches Mom cut an onion into perfect dice.

Grated garlic -- it's pungent!

Is there a better smell than onions sauteing in butter? We think not.

The soy goes into the onion sauce.

Followed by more mirin.

We found that the only way to really scrape off the marinade is by using your hands.

Although timWunotWoo doesn't specify, we decided to tie the chicken's legs together for even cooking. Amanda stands at the ready with a skewer for surgery (there was a small tear in the layer of fat covering the breast).

The chicken goes in the oven, and the sauce gets finished off with more butter.