This six-pound bird yields a lot of meat. But if you want even more, get a capon (a castrated rooster). They're quite huge: nine to 11 pounds. (You'll have to increase the amount of ingredients relative to the size of the bird, which will also take longer to cook.) Eugenia Bone gets capons from dartagnan.com.

Tender chicken is roasted with fresh ginger, garlic, and aromatic spices, creating a flavorful, fragrant dish with a hint of warmth and zest. Perfectly crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.

Rubbing butter on chicken skin (as well as under it) and letting it sit in the fridge for a few hours is a great way to make it extra-crispy, with moist breast meat. Here, Floyd Cardoz flavors the butter with cilantro, garlic, mint, chiles, cumin and lime juice.

Chicken quarters roasted with golden squash and sage are nice for a chilly autumn evening. To help the squash to brown evenly, be sure to spoon off the fat from the roasting pan after removing the breasts. This is a case where less is more: A thin layer of fat will brown the vegetable better than a quarter-inch of it.

This crisp and juicy roast chicken from star chef Jonathan Waxman of NYC’s Jams is perfect with his chunky seven-herb salsa verde.

"I'm crazy for chicken," Piero Incisa della Rocchetta says. "I regularly eat a whole one by myself." Inspired by beautifully browned Peking duck, he brushes chickens with a mixture of soy sauce and honey from the beehives in his Patagonia vineyards.

In this supersimple dish from Justin Chapple, chicken legs roast on top of torn pieces of bread that absorb the rich and tangy juices, becoming deliciously crisp and chewy.

Chefs Evan and Sarah Rich of RT Rotisserie in San Francisco make the very best chicken. They use a buttermilk brine that includes umami powder, garlic and Douglas fir—a signature ingredient from their flagship restaurant, Rich Table, that they forage themselves. In this adaptation, the chicken is roasted in the oven, and the brine is made with buttermilk, dried porcini, garlic and rosemary, though if you have access to Douglas fir sprigs, feel free to use them.

For this easy one-pan dish, Grace Parisi roasts chicken legs on a bed of potatoes and kale so the meaty juices keep the vegetables moist. Prep takes just 10 minutes and the resulting meal serves eight or makes for excellent leftovers. There's very little clean-up as everything bakes up together and can be served straight from the pan. It's super healthy from the kale and lemon, but also hearty because of the roasted potatoes.

“I’ve always been confident that simple, delicious food is good on its own terms. You just have to not mess it up.” — Judy Rodgers

Ashley Christensen, the chef at Poole's in North Carolina, kicks up her pimiento cheese with spicy poblanos and green hot sauce. In this brilliant riff, Justin Chapple spreads the creamy dip under the skin of a whole bird before it's roasted to get both crispy skin and juicy meat.

Succulent chicken is butter-roasted to golden perfection, then finished with a savory soy garlic glaze. The result is a rich, juicy dish with a perfect balance of umami, sweetness, and crisp, caramelized skin.