What Really Happens When You Roast a Chicken in 5 Pounds of Butter

If you haven't seen it already, there's a viral video from ChefClub that shows a whole chicken being slathered in five pounds of herb butter and roasted on a bed of rice and vegetables. It's purportedly the "world's juiciest chicken," but given the price of butter, is this cluck worth the bucks ? Nicole tried it out and reported her key findings:

• Five pounds of butter works out to be about $20 to $25. You could spend a fraction of that and rub the chicken all over with compound butter, but encasing it in a thick layer of butter is definitely more dramatic.
• We all know fat and water don't mix, so you have to make sure your chicken skin is absolutely dry before you try to cover it in softened butter, otherwise it won't stick. Unfortunately, having done that, it still won't stick. If you do manage to pat a layer of butter all over the chicken, you'll chill it for 30 minutes so the butter can firm up.
• While the buttered chicken is chilling, you'll pour a cup of uncooked rice into a roasting pan, and layer carrots and potatoes on top of that. (At this point, Nicole went a little rogue and added a bit of water to the pan in case the chicken didn't give off enough liquid.) Then the butter-encased chicken went on top of the vegetables and the whole thing went into a 350 degrees F oven for an hour.

Smash or Pass?

How did it turn out? Nicole says the smell was amazing, and she was wrong about how much liquid there would be in the pan. In fact, the chicken and vegetables were literally swimming in buttery juices. When she sliced into it, the chicken was indeed juicy — perhaps even juicier than her normal roast chicken. But the rice and vegetables in the pan were inedible. Could there be such a thing as too much butter? The answer is yes.

The final verdict: Because it does result in juicier meat, this over-the-top roasting trick could be worth it for a turkey. But for a chicken, stick to a less costly method of rubbing a compound butter under the skin to flavor and moisten the meat.

• Juiciness = 10/10
• Cost = 1/10

You can connect with Nicole as NicoleMcmom on Allrecipes and on Instagram @nicolemcmom.