Whole chicken, dry brined overnight uncovered in the fridge, roasted at 190C then cranked to 220C for the last twenty minutes. Meat is perfect at 74C in the thigh. Skin is beige and chewy, especially the underside of the thighs and anywhere touching the tray. I have tried butter under the skin and oil on top. Fan oven, chicken sits in a shallow metal roasting tin.
Get the bird off the floor of the tray. Skin touching hot metal in a puddle of rendered fat and juice is steaming, not roasting, which is exactly why the underside and the contact points stay pale. A small rack in the tin, or the bird sat on a bed of thick onion slices, fixes most of it in one change.
Second thing: oil on top of skin you have carefully dried is working against you. Dry brined overnight uncovered means the surface is already where you want it. Leave it alone, or use the barest smear. Fat on the surface slows the last of the moisture leaving.
The rack made a bigger difference than everything else I had tried combined. Underside is actually crisp now.
Onion bed is my favourite version of this because you get a side dish out of it and the tray is easier to clean.
Also look at how full the oven is and whether the fan is actually moving air over the bird. A tin with high sides creates a still pocket and the chicken sits in its own humidity. Low-sided tray, nothing else in the oven for the last stretch.
The high-sided tin is underrated as a cause. I switched to a quarter sheet pan with a rack and stopped thinking about this problem entirely.
Small thing that helped me: pour off the accumulated fat and juice about two thirds of the way through. It is free, takes ten seconds, and there is noticeably less steam in the last stretch.
@iron_camber · 4mo ago
Try the temperature order the other way round: twenty minutes hot at the start, then down to 180 to finish. The skin sets and browns while the surface is at its driest, rather than you trying to blast moisture off at the end when the tray is full of liquid.
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