Gather all your ingredients. I chose to roast some veggies along with the chicken: carrot, parsnip, turnip, sweet potato and onion. Thyme is an optional addition to the seasoning of the chicken - I decided to take full advantage of my fresh herbs and go with the thyme.

The first step is to wash your chicken under cold water, inside and out. I figured filling a bowl with water and rinsing a few times running under water ought to do the job.

After thoroughly washing the bird, pat it dry with some paper towels. Don't forget to dry the inside too.

This is an optional step, but one that Thomas Keller highly recommends so who I am to argue. We want to remove the wishbone prior to cooking so that carving is easier.

To remove the wishbone place your chicken breast side up. At the neck cavity opening you can feel the bone through the meat. Get your knife and scrape along side the bone all the way around so it's visible.

Disconnect the bone from the joint at the wings and trace it up to the top with your fingers, a bit of wiggling and knife work should allow it to come out fairly easily. Voila!

Season the inside of the cavity with a generous amount of salt and freshly ground pepper. Emphasis on the generous.

The next step is to truss the chicken. Basically what this means is getting some butchers twine to tie the chicken together so that it a) the breasts are protected and b) it cooks more evenly. The goal is to make a figure 8 as shown above and then wrap the string around the rest of the bird and tie it together. I won't go into all the details of how to do this (google it ftw) but suffice to say getting this right was the hardest part of cooking the dish for me, but definitely a good skill to learn. Future trussing will be much easier!

It should look like something like this when you're done. I probably did a very average job of it all; just one of those things that you get better at with practice.

Season the chicken with a generous (there's that word again) amount of salt. Like before, don't be shy with it. You want to use flakes of salt as they are easier to handle and will texture the skin better. Also, drop the salt from a height so that it disperses evenly over the skin.

Season further with some freshly ground pepper and thyme (optional).

Get your veggies ready to be prepared. Make sure not to use the same chopping board or knife that you handled the chicken with (and wash your hands!). Salmonella is a real concern when dealing with raw poultry and cross-contamination is something a lot of people forget about.

Chop the ends off, peel and wash your vegetables as required. I decided to chop mine into chunks of similar size and planned accordingly.

Dice, cube, chop away!

Place the veggies in a roasting try with a bit of oil (I used canola) and toss to coat. You can also do this in an oven safe pan.

Place your prepared chicken on top of the vegetables. It's worth noting that at no point have we added any sort of fat to the bird -- don't oil it, don't butter it, and we won't be basting it. The natural fats will be more than enough to cook it beautifully and the skin will come out nice and crispy and super delicious. It's now ready to go into your oven pre-heated to 230°C or 450° F.

No dish is quite complete without a complementing wine imo. I chose a 2007 Trinity Hill Chardonnay that went down very nicely. An interesting note about chardonnay is that it should never be drunk very cold (ie out of the fridge). Doing so kills a lot of the flavours and aromas. You are much better off drinking it only a few degrees below room temperature, so either put it in the fridge an hour or so before you plan to drink it or leave it in the fridge but remove it a couple of hours before it will be drunk.

After 40mins to an hour (depending on the size of the chicken) take the tray out of the oven. The juices of the chicken should run clear when cut into.

To give you an idea of just how succulent this turned out - I was trying to move the chicken from the tray to a chopping board to be carved. I tried to pick it up from one of its wings and it literally teared apart and the bone fell out, without any excessive force or utensils required. I of course ate it right away, so good.

I finally managed to move the bird over to my chopping board. Remove the twine and it is now ready to be carved.

Time to plate up. Crispy skin, succulent meat, well seasoned. It's looking good.

Add some vegetables to that plate. These were some of the best vegetables I've ever tasted in my life. So simple, so good. Gives further credence to the KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid acronym.

And there you have it. My first attempt at roasting a chicken: Thomas Keller style. Seasoned only with salt, pepper & thyme and simply roasted with some chopped vegetables. Served with a glass of excellent chardonnay - this was one of the best meals I've had in a long time.