Name: Oven Roasted Peking Chicken
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 90 min
Total time: 100 min
Ingredients: 1 3 to 5 lbs / 1.5 to 2 kg whole chicken; 1/2 teaspoon five spice powder (for dusting the cavity); 1/4 cup light soy sauce ((or soy sauce)); 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce ((or soy sauce) (*Footnote 1)); 1 tablespoon sugar; 5-6 slices ginger (about half a thumb); 1 teaspoon five spice powder (for marinade); 2 tablespoons maple syrup ((or honey))

A cross between a roasted chicken and Peking duck, this recipe is for days when you have that craving for peking duck but chicken is all you have to work with. {Gluten-Free adaptable}

Oven roasted Peking chicken whole chicken

Craving Peking duck? This recipe for creating chicken in the same style aptly melds roasted chicken with Peking duck for a main dish that goes above and beyond fabulous.

Introducing Joyce from Pups with Chopsticks

Hi I’m Joyce, and I am the recipe developer and photographer behind the food blog Pups with Chopsticks, a website where I share my tried and tested Asian recipes! When I’m not eating, or playing with the dogs – I like to spend my free time creating comfort food, traditional and fusion Asian recipes in my small kitchen! I love experimenting with international flavors and ingredients, hopefully I can inspire you to do the same at home too!

Joyce’s famous Peking Chicken

Love cooking whole chicken? Me too! I prefer it because in one cooking session, I have enough chicken leftover to toss into stir-fry, noodles, fried, rice, or even things like nachos and salads. There’s no complicated procedure to it either. With this recipe, you simply marinate it, pop it in the oven, and voila! It’s done.

But what do you do if you’re craving Peking duck? Sure, you could go to the takeout place around the corner, but you promised yourself you wouldn’t go out to eat until the weekend. And you’ve got a whole chicken just sitting there. Duck isn’t always on-hand like chicken in my kitchen. And that’s where I got the idea of making a whole chicken in the same style as a Peking duck.

Want to try it?

Here are a few tips!

Sliced oven roasted Peking chicken served on steamed rice

Cooking notes

1. How to add the appetizing caramelized color

Dark soy sauce is something you might not have in your cabinets. It’s just less salty, darker, and a bit more syrupy than regular soy sauce. You can get by without it but you’re not going to get that brown color skin that Peking duck is associated with.

2. Dipping sauce

You’ll also need ginger scallion sauce. Incidentally, the leftovers from your Peking chicken will also give you leftover ginger scallion sauce which you simply must add to your rice. You’ll never want it any other way again!

Cooking steps

These steps are much like what went down in this recipe for Sweet and Sticky Chinese BBQ Pork. The key difference here is that we’re using an oven, not a grill/smoker.

This is not as complicated as it looks. In fact, in just 4 steps, you’ve got it!

1. Marinate

You’ll add a half-teaspoon off five spice inside your chicken and then add the marinade ingredients into a trusty zippered bag, or even a large bowl. Add the chicken and then marinate for no less than 4 hours in the fridge.

Oven roasted Peking chicken ingredients

2. Cook

About 30 minutes before you plan to cook it, take the chicken out of your fridge. Take the ginger slices from the marinade and put them inside the chicken.

Remove the chicken from the fridge 30 minutes before putting it in the oven. Stuff the ginger slices that you used for marinating into the chicken. Get that oven up to heat and put it in a pan with a rack so the airflow to the chicken will give it that crispy skin. Pro tip: use balls of foil if you don’t have that kind of rack and shove them under the chicken to create the same effect.

3. Prepare sauce

Take that leftover marinade and cook it on the stove top with honey or pure maple syrup added just before finishing. It thickens and sweetens it up.

4. Baste

Every 20 minutes for the entire first hour you’re roasting that chicken, use a brush to baste the chicken with its own drippings. Once that time is up, start basting it every 10 minutes with the sauce you prepared.

Your chicken should have oil drippings, but don’t panic if it doesn’t. You can simply add a tablespoon of oil yourself and baste with it.

Oven roasted Peking chicken served in a plate

5. Check doneness

Not sure if your chicken is done? I think if you’re ever cooking whole chicken or large roasts even, a digital meat thermometer is a must in your kitchen. You’ll never have to wonder if you’ve got it cooked enough. You’ll want to insert it at the thickest point. On a whole chicken, it’s the thigh.

I highly recommend a digital meat thermometer to take the guessing game out of how long to cook meat. Insert the digital thermometer at the thickest part of the chicken, which is usually the thigh. You want to take it out of the oven when the meat thermometer tells you that it’s 165 F or 74 C. Generally, it should take an hour and a half at 350 F degrees, but go with your thermometer’s reading for safety.

6. Rest the chicken

Leave that chicken alone on a big plate for 10 to 15 minutes so the juices go back into the meat. Trust me! Once you do, you can carve it up and enjoy the deliciousness!

Oven roasted Peking chicken

If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it @omnivorescookbook on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with.

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