In a crock pot.

I agree with clampers, if you want a chicken for the meat for soups, stews, fajitas, salad, etc... cook it on low for 6-8 hours in a crockpot with half a stick of butter & some salt & pepper in the gullet. If you want some fabulous roast chicken with crunchy skin, roast it and baste with chicken broth, salt, pepper & brown sugar.

Standing on a can of beer in your BBQ. Well, some variation of that. I've filled the can with fruit juices and cooked it inside my oven and it turned out good too.

My favorite way is by using my rotisserie. The skin comes out the perfect amount of crispy and the juices make the chicken to die for. It takes just the 5-10 minutes to season and tie it up(instead of twine, Target sells these great silicone rubber bands!) and its done in little more than an hour. I shred up the chicken and put it in wraps, pasta salads, etc etc throughout the week.

Crock pot is really good.
Rotisserie is really good.
But brined and deep fried is even better :-)

I really really liked the chicken in milk recipe. It turned out beautifully.

Brined and roasted in the oven, alongside some red potatoes, carrots, and fennel. Yum!

Jamie Oliver's Chicken in Milk. I'm in. And it's one of the few things I can do without a recipe, so I look brilliant when I pull it out of the oven at someone elses house.

Zuni style, hands-down. A few weeks back I tried the Julia Child's method with butter rubbed all over and we still preferred the Zuni recipe. Super easy, no need for extra fat and delicious. I'll sometimes throw a lemon in the cavity and roast up some vegetables or potatoes at the same time.

I really didn't care much for Jamie Oliver's Chicken in Milk. Rotisserie chicken gets my vote every time.

I LOVE Cooks Illustrated's Crispy Skin High Roast Chicken. It's brined and butterflied with a compund butter of thyme, garlic and dijon mustard shmeared under the skin. Then it gets roasted on the top rack of a brolier pan at 475F, with thinly sliced potatoes layered on the bottom of the broiler pan. The butter and chicken drippings season the potatoes which end up beautifully golden and crispy on the bottom when all is said and done. The meat is always tender and juicy and the skin is indescribably delicious. It's not uncommon for my husband and I to eat all of the skin before we even cut into the bird itself. Highly recommended.

Zuni all the way, but I hate the mess it makes in my oven so I usually make chicken in milk instead.

In my Staub La Cocotte (oval) with potatoes, pearl onions, carrots, lots of butter, etc. just like Julia Child's recipe for Casserole Roasted Chicken (here is a post on my blog when I made it a few days ago: http://jenesaispas.ca/?p=238). It comes out so moist and tender and very "light and buttery" tasting.

I made the chicken in milk last night for the second time and ran seriously low on the juice. Or maybe I was sopping too much everytime I opened the pot to baste.... whatever. It was amazing but I really love just a chicken leg quarter, salted to death and high heat oven, served with mashed red potatoes in buttermilk or wilted greens from the farmer's market.

Another vote for the Zuni method!! For those who don't have the book, here's the super abridged version: sprinkle bird with salt and pepper, inside and out. roast at a super high 450 or so. Be ready for smoke alarm to go off. After about 30 minutes you should have lovely golden skin. Reduce heat to 375 and cook until done. Well, that might not be exactly how Zuni does it, but that's my basic Sunday dinner method. YUM!

From an old Fannie Farmer cookbook: Butter the chicken inside and out; salt and pepper; cover it in dill weed. (I also put dill SEED inside the bird. Roast at super high 450 or so then turn down and cook until done, basting with juices and, the recipe suggested, some diluted beef broth. With rice and a salad, it doesn't get any better.

I really like the Zuni method, and also enjoy stuffing the bird with citrus of any kind. I've made the "with milk" method three times, and while it's OK and very simple, it doesn't make my heart sing.

Last week, inspired by the spatchcocked bird in the Gwynneth video, I made the Cook's Illustrated version and it was pretty damn good (composite butter under the skin, and brined first). Zuni Bread Salad made it divine.

While I appreciate that flattening the bird roasts it quicker and more evenly, I still like roasting birds whole. My 2 favourite methods are stuffed with my grandmother's stuffing (fresh breadcrumbs, chicken liver sautéed in tiny diced shallots and butter, a little whipped butter, parsley, salt & pepper, and stiffly beaten egg whites) or Bud's Sunday Roast Chicken, which is pretty much my standard. Served, of course, with spoonbread and honey-lemon carrots.

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/buds-sunday-roast-chicken

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/normas-spoon-bread

As for Jamie's chicken in milk recipe, I've made it a couple of times -- with all these great reviews I kept thinking maybe the first time was a fluke, as no one was bowled over by it. But even the second time, no one was bowled over by it... I am going to try the original, traditional Tuscan recipe that he adapted it from though, Arista al Latte (pork loin in milk).

A chicken-in-a-pot recipe that *has* gotten rave reviews every time I have made it though is Chicken in Riesling:

http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2008/03/chickeninriesling

(does anyone have a clue where to get those amazing blue handmade ceramic plates???)

Well, that and Julia's Coq au Vin (flambéed).

Made the chicken in milk according to recipe but used ground cinnamon instead of stick - still turned out great. Next, I'm planning to give it an Asian twist by using lemongrass, ginger and cumin instead of lemon and cinnamon. We'll see how it turns out...

For about a year, we were hooked on a recipe from Jamie's Dinners, in which you parboil lemons and potatoes, then stuff the cavity of the chicken with the lemon so that the juices drain down into the flesh while it roasts. Halfway through the roast, you pull the chicken, toss the potatoes in the rendered fat, put the chicken back in, and try to keep from drooling all over everything while you're waiting for it to roast.

But THEN this month we tried a recipe from Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries - rub the bird inside and out with salt, pepper, rosemary, and olive oil, then roast it breast-up. After 45 minutes, flip the bugger over and give it another 45. The flavor was amazing!

Pollo Arrosto con patate - Venice Airport Style Chicken & Potatoes
Jill Dupleix's gorgeous recipe for four is inspired by Italian airport cafes where great quantities of food are cooked very simply using a minimal list of ingredients.This is roast chicken and chips, Venice airport style

800g medium potatoes -- peeled
2 red onions -- halved and sliced
20 cherry tomatoes
4 organic chicken legs (quarters)
Lots of fresh thyme sprigs
2 tbsp olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
250ml water

Pre-heat the oven to 424F-220c/Gas 7. Cut the potatoes in half lengthways then slice to make into thick ‘chips’. Toss the potatoes, onions and thyme sprigs in a roasting pan with 2 tbsp olive oil, sea salt and pepper.

Add 250ml water and bake for 20 minutes. Rub the chicken with sea salt and pepper, and place on top. Drizzle with a little extra olive oil, scatter with more thyme, and bake for 40 minutes, adding the cherry tomatoes after 20 minutes.

To serve, scoop up the vegetables and place on warm plates. Cut each chicken leg through the joint and place on top of the vegetables and scatter with extra thyme sprigs. Squish a couple of the cherry tomatoes into a few spoonfuls of seasoned olive oil for an instant sauce, and drizzle over the top.

Marcella Hazan's chicken and two lemons
Barbara Kafka's roast chicken (recipe starts preheat oven to 500)
chicken in milk is good I just made it this weekend
Madeline Kamman's chicken and 40 cloves
Jacques Pepin's roast chicken from the cookbook he did with Julia Child

but my absolute favorite is spatchcocking on a Weber grill which is difficult to do in Vermont in January.

I frankly don't understand why anyone would do chicken in a crockpot it always ends up overcooked for me and thus rather sawdusty as leftovers.

Zuni style! With enthusiasm! I've made the chicken in milk and I didn't particularly care for it. But yeah, the first step in the Zuni recipe should be "take the batteries out of your smoke detector." I do mine in a cast-iron skillet instead of a pie pan and throw a carrot, and a quartered onion and potato in with it. Cooked in the juices, they are incredibly good. The only possible improvement to the Zuni recipe is to put a little fat or butter under the skin on the breast, as it can be a little dry. But really, I've never found a way to have not-dry chicken breast without slow cooking, which doesn't do much for the flavor.

Zuni style, with no herbs. Just lots of salt and pepper. It comes out perfect EVERYTIME.

I do love the chicken in milk recipe too.

http://whitneyinchicago.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/chicken-in-milk/

I only like chicken breast and other parts of chicken meat without ever seeing its bones. So my favourite style is marinading chicken with milk, sage, garlic, thyme, fresh black pepper and salt and put it in oven with shallots and green pepper here and there. Perfect for me.

I salt and pepper inside and out, stuff the bird with onion, celery, and lemon and cover the outside with dried marjoram and thyme. Then roast it at 375, basting occasionally, in an oval Dutch oven. Sometimes I throw in potatoes and garlic around it, but not always.

I would like to second mschatelaine to say that I didn't care much for the Jamie Oliver chicken in milk, but I do the pork loin in milk all the time and it is to die for!

Well I know its a bit indulgent, but recently I rubbed under the skin and on top with lots of fennel pollen mixed with butter and that seasoning alone changed my chicken world! BEst way to use the worlds most expensive spice (fairly certain it rivals saffron).

Ina Garten's "Perfect Roast Chicken"... Is literally perfect every time!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/perfect-roast-chicken-recipe/index.html

Zuni style is my preferred method. I've never heard of Jamie Oliver's braised in milk recipe but to be honest, it doesn't sound all that appetizing.

I brine chicken no matter what technique I use.

Best options, in order:

Beer can style on the grill
Smoked in my trash can smoker
Remove backbone and cook flattened on the grill
Roast with root veggies in the oven

So many great things about using a whole chicken. It's cheap and using the carcass for homemade chicken stock is pure delight.

Zuni style for sure. Best chicken ever. Despite the smoke alarm problems. My kids were asking for it today (even my vegetarian 14-year-old daughter).

Rinse and pat dry the bird. Put a half lemon and half onion (or more if the chicken is large) in the cavity. Rub or spray with olive oil. Season with liberal amounts of kosher salt and black pepper and either chopped garlic or good quality garlic granules(as from Whole Foods). Add some dried or minced fresh thyme.

Place breast down in the roasting pan for the first 30 minutes, then flip for the rest of the cooking time. Should be about 1 to 1 and a quarter hours, depending on the size.

Add a cup or two of liquid when you turn the bird. I usually use white wine and water, but broth would work also.

Enjoy

Nigella's butterflied chicken, marinated with lots of lemon and rosemary. I like the chicken in milk, but this is better.

I'm not in love with Nigella's other books, but all of the chicken recipes I've tried (and I've tried most of them) in Forever Summer are drop dead.

I ditto Barbara Kafka's roast chicken formula... roast at 500 degrees. takes about 10 minutes a pound to get to the bird to the proper temp. The roasting pan needs to be just big enough to fit the bird (not too big). I slip a few tablespoons of butter underneath the skin of the breast. Season inside and out with salt and pepper. stuff the cavity with whatever fresh herbs I have in my garden at the time. Sometimes I will quarter and stuff a lemon into the cavity along with the herbs. Make sure you take the batteries out of the smoke detector while you are roasting - then remember to put them back in when you are done. You get a visually beautiful chicken with brown crispy skin and moist moist meat. I've never burned the chicken or dried it out using this method. Roast chicken perfection!

alice waters' recipe for roast chicken from the art of simple food. it's so easy and so perfect every time.

Hubby gave me this one and it worked a dream:

Turn your oven on high (450 if you have ventilation, 425 if not). Coat a 3- or 4-pound chicken with coarse salt so that you have an appealing crust of salt (a tablespoon or so). Put the chicken in a pan, stick a lemon or some onion or any fruit or vegetable you have on hand into the cavity. Put the chicken in the oven. Go away for an hour. Watch some TV, read, have sex. When an hour has passed, take the chicken out of the oven and put it on the stove top for 15 more minutes. Finito