This Walmart Pantry Staple Is My Secret Ingredient for Incredible Roast Chicken

In the thick of the pandemic, tired of having to prepare meals three times a day, I resorted to the weeknight workhorse of make-ahead meals: roast chicken. I just wanted something easy and no fuss that I could make at the beginning of the week and would fuel me through the days that followed.

After toting home a whole chicken from my local market, I scrounged my pantry for any seasonings I could incorporate and stumbled upon a canister of Borsari Citrus Seasoned Salt, barely used and a bit dusty. I’m honestly not even sure when I purchased it from Walmart, but it seemed like the perfect time to give it a whirl.

Upon the first bite, I knew I would never roast a chicken without Borsari Citrus Seasoned Salt again. The meat was bursting with flavor, tender from the infused butter but still bright and balanced from little pieces of lemon peel. 

The taste unlocked a core food memory from my childhood visiting El Pollo Loco, a West Coast-based Mexican chain that specializes in citrus-marinated, fire-grilled rotisserie chicken. My parents are Korean immigrants who were (and are still!) creatures of habit: once they found a place with food they liked, they’d visit it over and over again for years until, as my mother likes to put it, “the owner changed” and the quality of the food dropped.

El Pollo Loco made their list. One roast chicken was just the right size to feed our family of four, and it came with fresh flour tortillas, salsas, and sauces for making delicious chicken tacos. I took the cue and started incorporating my roast chicken seasoned with citrus salt butter into our weekly taco nights. 

How I Use Borsari Citrus Seasoned Salt

I’ve long been a proponent of using herbed butter to season my roast chicken. It’s a surefire way to make the skin crispy while keeping the meat underneath moist and flavorful—a technique I’ve adopted after many years of Thanksgiving turkey trussing. 

The Borsari Citrus Seasoned Salt is perfect for this, a one-stop method for adding all the seasonings I want to the butter. There are crunchy flakes of sea salt, nuggets of dried garlic, flecks of basil and rosemary, and bits of dried lemon peel. 

I mix the seasoned salt into the softened butter and rub it all over the chicken and underneath the skin. After popping it in the oven at 425°F for about an hour (more or less depending on the size of the chicken) until an instant-read thermometer reads 165°F, the chicken is beautifully golden brown, studded with the burnished pieces of the seasoned salt mixture.

Ways To Use Up Roast Chicken Leftovers

In addition to make-your-own taco night, I’ve found tasty ways to extend the chicken into the week. Part of the post-Borsari chicken dinner cleanup is shredding all the leftover meat off the bones. The bones are tossed into a stock pot and covered with water along with any leftover veggie scraps to make a super-fortified broth that beats anything store-bought. 

My husband uses the leftover meat to make his famous chicken salad featuring diced apples, dried cranberries, and walnuts, which we use for quick sandwiches or wraps. Or, we mix the chicken into a store-bought green chile sauce to make an enchilada casserole that lasts us days. 

Countless meals from a simple roast chicken and a single can of seasoned salt? No wonder we return to this reliable stalwart week after week.