Just about everything that is onerous and terrifying about roasting chicken goes away when you slow-roast. Since the low, long cooking guarantees awesomely sticky skin and juicy, tender flesh—albeit of a meltier and, to me, tastier sort than you get from hot-roasted birds—there’s no smoke alarm smashing, nor is there a need to salt the chicken in advance, which smart people say helps promote, well, juicy, tender flesh. You don’t even need to let the bird come to room temperature before you pop it in the oven—an hour or so of waiting swapped for an hour or so of extra roasting time.

And you can even stuff the cavity with herbs and lemon without worrying about derailing skin-crisping or coat the skin with spices or sauce without worrying about burning. In other words, the technique requires no forethought, no fuss, and perhaps best of all, no thermometer, the typical five-minute window of perfect doneness stretched to half an hour, maybe more. In fact, this method requires only a timer. If the chicken isn’t delicious at 2½ hours, then your oven is busted, and no recipe can help with that.