Orange Cranberry Roast Chicken with Rosemary Balsamic Butter

This crazy delicious Orange Cranberry Roast Chicken is covered with rosemary balsamic butter to keep it tender and juicy. It's a super easy to make and healthy recipe that is as perfect for a weekend dinner as it is for a special holiday meal.

Complete the meal with some mashed potatoes with cream cheese and our favorite stuffing recipe!

Warning … Christmas chicken recipe coming atcha!

I've been keeping this recipe with you for what feels like ages now. It's not that I didn't want to share it, it's just that I thought November was a little too early so I forced myself to sit tight. Now that we're full on in holiday spirt mode, I thought now is a perfect time.

This cranberry roast chicken could easily be cranberry roast turkey if you let it hand out in your oven a little longer. Or you could simply roast a couple of chickens if you're cooking for a crowd. Either way, sitting your bird on a bed of cranberries and oranges and smothering it with rosemary balsamic butter is totally the way to go.

So I've got to be honest, I've been dreaming of cranberry roast chicken ever since I saw my friend Lindsay's One Pan Cranberry Balsamic Chicken recipe pop up on my Pinterest feed a few months ago. I knew that I had to make my own recipe with those delicious flavors.

It was right around the time I made that Herb Lemon Butter Roast Chicken recipe for you. I made a pact with myself that I'd share more roast chicken recipes with you because they're the easiest and most delicious things ever. Healthy, delicious, and easy to make is the mantra of this blog and roast chicken nails all of those.

This cranberry roast chicken is as good as it sounds. The cranberries cook into a kind of cranberry sauce for the chicken that you can spoon on top when you serve it. So good!

The first time I made this cranberry roast chicken, my heart sunk when it came out of the oven. It was black. All over. I almost cried. ← that happened.

I couldn't figure out how I burned the skin to a crisp. It looked terrible! I thought maybe it was the pan I used that held the chicken up high, or maybe it was because I forgot to set the timer and it had been longer than I was guessing.

I put it on a plate for us to eat, figuring we could sadly peel the skin (the best part) away and the rest of the chicken would be salvageable.

Here's the thing with this cranberry roast chicken:

Black skin doesn't equal burned skin. What I didn't know the first time I made with, is that the balsamic vinegar will turn the skin black. Just like you see in the picture. It's not that way when you put it into the oven, so it was a major, tear-inducing shock when it first happened. So when you make this, don't worry when you open the oven. The back skin is only extra delicious balsamic skin.

More delicious Roast chicken recipes:

• Lemon Herb Butter Roast Chicken
• Parmesan Crusted Roast Chicken
• One Pan Honey Mustard Chicken and Potatoes
• Crockpot Roast Chicken

Print