The Pie Filling You Should Be Coating Roast Chicken With

While store-bought rotisserie chicken is certainly convenient, roasting a whole chicken in your oven is much cheaper, fairly effort-free, and allows for a lot more customization. Case in point: lemon curd chicken. Yep, the same stuff you use to fill a lemon meringue pie canmake a pretty tasty chicken glaze. Lemon curd not only contains plenty of sugar, which will melt into a delightfully sticky sauce, but it also has some sourness from the lemons to help balance out the flavors. With the fat from the chicken skin adding richness, your roast meat gets a triple taste punch.

To make lemon curd chicken, you first need a jar of lemon curd plus a chicken. (No surprises here.) Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then stir some salt and pepper into the curd as well. You can use a fairly generous amount — say, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper to 4 ounces of curd, which should be enough to coat a 4-pound bird. 

Rub the seasoned curd all over the chicken, including under the skin (if you can get your hands in there). Sprinkle some olive oil over the top, too, then roast the chicken as you usually would. Since sugary substances can burn pretty quickly, it's best to keep an eye on the chicken as it cooks. If the skin looks brown but the interior temperature has yet to reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit, cover the pan with foil until the chicken is done.

For a real sense of satisfaction, you could make your own lemon curd. It just so happens that instructions are included in our lemon cream tart recipe. If you make a double batch of the filling, you'll not only have enough lemon curd to coat a bird or two but you'll have plenty left over to fill a pie shell (which would be the perfect dessert for such a meal). To save time with the tart, you could use a pre-baked or graham cracker crust and make the lemon curd in the microwave. If you prefer a flavor other than lemon, you could also make or buy orange, lime, or grapefruit curd, or one that combines several different citrus fruits.

For chicken that's just as lemony but significantly less sweet, another alternative would be to purchase a jar of preserved lemon paste. This condiment is somewhat curd-like in appearance and texture, but its flavor is salty rather than sweet. You can rub it all over your roast chicken as described above, but in this case, no added salt is necessary. The chicken coating may not be as apt to burn, either, since lemon paste doesn't contain as much sugar, if any.