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Last night I marinated a whole chicken in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and rosemary for about 6 hours and then roasted her over fingerling potatoes, sliced carrots and red onion wedges.

I think the trick is to brown the bird in olive oil/butter mixture on all sides before roasting.

Last night I roasted a small chicken with two whole lemons inside, and salt and pepper outside - Marcella Hazan's recipe. It came out great, and was so easy... although the meat wasn't extremely lemony, the juices were great spooned over it, and the sauteed rainbow chard I did on the side.

For me, the key is to use as many variations of lemon as possible.

Marinate the chicken with lemon, stuff the chicken with lemon and lemon thyme, rub the chicken with roasted garlic and preserved lemon and then deglaze the pan with lemon juice and finish with lemon zest and lemon thyme.

In the recent COOKS ILLUSTRATED here is a recipe for a crispy-skinned roast chicken. It involved carefullly separating the skin from the bird but leaving it intact. I wonder if you could make a briny paste of salt, olive oil, lemon zest, and lemon juice and inject into the space between bird and skin. And then continue to baste with this mixture as the bird roasts.

Unless I'm making cakes or pies, I rarely find the results from the multiple extra steps in Cooks Illustrated recipes to be worth the additional time and effort.

I slip lemon slices in between the flesh and skin. You can have your brown and crispy skin and lemony chicken breast too!

I grate the zest; mix it with garlic, herbs, and butter; then rub half of it on the breast under the skin and half over the rest of the chicken. The remainder of the lemon goes inside the cavity.

My method, which I think you'll all like very much, is as follows:

Cut the tips off the lemon, enough to expose the pulp. Then
use a mandoline, and make paper thin slices of lemon. Pepper them, and pan fry them in butter until they are kinda crispy. Salt the slices, and tuck a bunch of these fried peppered lemon slices under the skin of the chicken, along with your favorite poultry herbs, such as fresh thyme and sage. Pat the chicken skin dry. If you want extra crispy skin, put the chicken on a v-shaped roasting rack, and use a hair dryer to dry the skin; the drier the skin before roasting, the more crispy the skin will be. Brush on a very thin coat of oil. Roast, and enjoy.

I like to make lemon pepper chicken using rock cornish game hens by snipping out the back bone using poultry shears, removing the keel bone, and flattening the game hen, and blasting the game hens at 450Ëš for 15-20 minutes.