Roast Chicken

After spending the first forty years of my life without ever roasting a chicken, I've started doing it relatively often (once or twice a month) recently.
I use a simple recipe of just tossing fresh herbs on it (I actually kept Anthony Bourdain's techniques episode and re-watch Thomas Keller make it).
I'm looking for something relatively simple but a different.
Any ideas? The goal is to have relatively limited prep time. It is something I cook after a long day at the office.

Find a spice rub you like and rub the entire chicken (preferably on and below the skin) with it.

You could do a brine the night before, and actually Keller's fried chicken brine from Ad Hoc At Home is nice (you should be able to find it online). I've also been messing around with my own 12 hr brine followed by a 12 hr marinade that has lemon, rosemary, and garlic in it. Lastly, the pre salting talked about in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook makes a good chicken too. Any specific flavors or techniques you're looking for?

Jeff

No particular flavors sought. Just something that tastes good and is relatively easy to make.

I second Zuni and Keller. But if you're looking for a specific and different flavor profile, one thing I find incredibly easy is to rub a whole chicken (or cut parts) with most of a jar of Grey Poupon dijon mustard, let it marinate / air chill uncovered overnight in the fridge, and just roast at a high temp after work. If you put a little vermouth or white wine in the bottom of the pan you'll end up with a nice sauce for rice, potatoes, veg, etc. on the side.

There's a great recipe for "Peanut Chicken" in this month's Garden & Gun. I couldn't find a direct link to the recipe on G & G's website, but I did find this adaptation. http://1019litefm.radio.com/2011/04/14/ ... itchen-50/

I've made a tandoori roast chicken by marinated chicken in yogurt with garlic, ginger, chiles, garam masaala, cumin, coriander and turmeric. Here's a similar recipe. Not bad with Trader Joe's garlic naan.

Soften some butter and mix in minced shallots and fresh tarragon with some salt and pepper. Push mixture under breast and leg/thigh skin. Rub outside skin with olive oil and sprinkle with flake salt. You can do this in about 10 minutes or less.

Preferably roast on outside grill over a little apple wood or just in the oven. I prefer olive oil to butter as I find olive oil gives a crisper, more even roasted skin maybe due to water content of butter but not sure.

No brining, no pre-salting, just pierce some lemons and you're off . . . Marcella Hazan's Roast Chicken with Two Lemons.

i use keller's way, but with cut up chicken (most recently thighs/drumsticks) over a bed of root vegetables. comes out great, but not particularly cutting edge (i doubt roasted chicken is supposed to be).

A good chicken makes a world of difference. Wettstein chickens at the Oak Park Farmers market are really good.

dudefella wrote:i use keller's way, but with cut up chicken (most recently thighs/drumsticks) over a bed of root vegetables. comes out great, but not particularly cutting edge (i doubt roasted chicken is supposed to be).

I often just cut out the spine with some kitchen shears and lay the bird flat, skin side up. It seems to cook faster and more evenly.

I follow the old James Beard recipe - S&P then 4 or so strips of bacon laid over the breast ... good bunch of tarragon in cavity ... what more do you need?

What temperature should it be cooked to? Is there a particular part of the bird where I should check?

I don't worry about the temperature; I just slice between the leg and thigh, and if the juices run clear, then the chicken is done.

aschie30 wrote:I don't worry about the temperature; I just slice between the leg and thigh, and if the juices run clear, then the chicken is done.

I tried that, and the meat still ended up being undercooked. In hindsight, I should have known based on the skin color (not browned enough).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Into two different coffee cups, measure a quarter-cup of good olive oil each and half a lemon's worth of juice each, along with S and P plus dried parsley and tarragon to taste. Reserve the lemon wreckage; it'll go into the chicken cavity.

Take a good-size baking potato (russets work best) and cut into eighths; use a long-tined dinner fork to punch holes into each eighth to avoid steam explosions, then brush with olive oil/lemon/S+P/herb mixture and place in a line into baking pan. Save coffee cup of oil mix and pastry brush; you're not done with it.

Rinse 3-pound (more or less) kosher/free-range/organically raised chicken and remove unnecessary fat pads from cavity. S + P chicken all over, including cavity, then brush back and front of chicken with oil mixture and stuff cavity with 2-3 quarters of squeezed-out lemons and a few sprigs of fresh parsley and thyme. Place on top of potato bed in baking pan and place pan, potatoes, chicken, and all into 350-degree oven for the next hour. You still have one coffee cup of oil/lemon/herb/S + P mixture: save it.

After an hour of roasting, pull the pan out of the oven long enough to use a second, separate pastry brush (avoids cross-contamination) with the second cup of oil/lemon mix (same thing: safety precaution) to baste the chicken and its potato bed liberally. Throw back into 350-degree oven for second hour.

During the second hour, prepare any side dishes (e.g., steamed asparagus, one of my favorite things in the world with lemon and butter) to coordinate with the chicken. Pull chicken out after two hours and hold for 15 minutes to rest. Good stuff. Cava works well to drink with this.

Just a quick caveat relating to aschie30's reference to Marcella's chicken with 2 lemons.
I used to make that a lot and loved it. Then I started to have problems. I would do everything you're supposed to do prep-wise (i.e. crush the lemons a bit and pierce them), yet after the chicken was done, I'd remove the lemons from the cavity and find them utterly unchanged. As if they'd never been in the oven at all. They were whole and firm and hadn't rendered a drop of juice. This happened several times and I began to wonder if our U.S. lemons are bred with thicker skins than Italian ones. I simply couldn't account for the phenomenon, but it was so disappointing I eventually stopped making the dish.
However, I still love several other recipes her first 2 books. Especially the pan roasted and fricase ones. (Not quite as simple as roasting a whole one, but worth doing.)

mrbarolo wrote:Just a quick caveat relating to aschie30's reference to Marcella's chicken with 2 lemons.
They were whole and firm and hadn't rendered a drop of juice. This happened several times and I began to wonder if our U.S. lemons are bred with thicker skins than Italian ones. I simply couldn't account for the phenomenon, but it was so disappointing I eventually stopped making the dish.

Could it have been the wax on the skin?

mrbarolo wrote:Just a quick caveat relating to aschie30's reference to Marcella's chicken with 2 lemons.
I used to make that a lot and loved it. Then I started to have problems. I would do everything you're supposed to do prep-wise (i.e. crush the lemons a bit and pierce them), yet after the chicken was done, I'd remove the lemons from the cavity and find them utterly unchanged. As if they'd never been in the oven at all. They were whole and firm and hadn't rendered a drop of juice. This happened several times and I began to wonder if our U.S. lemons are bred with thicker skins than Italian ones. I simply couldn't account for the phenomenon, but it was so disappointing I eventually stopped making the dish.

Hi,

We have great success with Marcella Hazen's concept of tight trussing with lemons. I usually use three lemon halves.

I think you are correct about the lemons and there are lots of other variables:

oven, chicken size
pan size, thickness and depth
rack
tightness of the truss
oven temperature
oven mode

Tim

Tim's right. I had what mrbarolo described happen to me once, and I blamed the oven temp, because the chicken came out so flabby (in fact, it was this incident that induced me to buy an oven thermometer, turns out I was 30 degrees to the bad). This bakes at 350, which is a relatively low temp for roasting a chicken, so if you don't fire up that oven right to 350, I'm not sure the middle ever gets hot enough to wilt the lemons.

Having said that, in successful renditions of this dish, the lemons look, well, baked, but they still have some juice left in them. So when the chicken comes out of the oven, I remove the lemons, carve the chicken, then use tongs to squeeze any remaining juice from the lemons onto the plated chicken.

Also, thickness of the lemons skins can be an issue (if they feel firm and have the perfect tapered ends, they're probably not juicy enough). I also select small lemons.

aschie30 wrote: This bakes at 350, which is a relatively low temp for roasting a chicken, so if you don't fire up that oven right to 350, I'm not sure the middle ever gets hot enough to wilt the lemons.

Aschie,

The tight trussing of the bird with lemons in the cavity dictates the extra long 350 degree roast. Roasting at 425-450 is appropriate only for untrussed birds.

You have mis-read the recipe. Marcella's recipe calls for about one hour at 350 degrees and an additional 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Yes, those lemons should be fully cooked.

As in all recipes, you should be cooking your chicken to temperature to adjust for those variables. This means breast meat to 150 degrees and thighs to 165 degrees.

Tim

Tim wrote:

aschie30 wrote: This bakes at 350, which is a relatively low temp for roasting a chicken, so if you don't fire up that oven right to 350, I'm not sure the middle ever gets hot enough to wilt the lemons.

Aschie,

The tight trussing of the bird with lemons in the cavity dictates the extra long 350 degree roast. Roasting at 425-450 is appropriate only for untrussed birds.

You have mis-read the recipe. Marcella's recipe calls for about one hour at 350 degrees and an additional 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Yes, those lemons should be fully cooked.

As in all recipes, you should be cooking your chicken to temperature to adjust for those variables. This means breast meat to 150 degrees and thighs to 165 degrees.

Tim

Nope, didn't misread the recipe, please re-read my post. I've roasted many chickens, very aware of the cooking procedure. However, if your oven isn't getting to 350 degrees in the first instance, it doesn't matter that you fire it up to 400 for the last 20 minutes, those lemons will not soften enough to flavor the chicken -- I've seen it. Instead, you've got slow(er) roasted chicken, which will be fully cooked, but not hot enough in the inner cavity to heat up a whole, thick-skinned lemon enough to soften it. FWIW, I'm actually agreeing with you, and providing my experience for why mrbarolo's chicken may not have ideal results.

Sun Times Food Section, June 6-10.
Josh Adams whole brined chicken. Then on the grill.
Anyone know his recipe?

Thanks,

Wally Wade

24 hour brined bird, Mad Hunky brine I am testing for a buddy. Tweaked with my adders(citrus, cumin, etc):




rinsed, patted dry, then rubbed down with bacon fat, sprinkled with old bay. Cavity stuffed with garlic cloves and cubed lemon:





roasting setup. lump, no wood.



fin:



took about 2 hours, leaned the bird against the 1/8 pan to crisp the bottom of the bird.

Top notch bird(free range, etc.,), great texture, and popping flavor you can only get with a proper brine. Bacon fat made the skin crisp as hell.

Bird was used for recipes: chicken enchiladas last night, chicken salad sandwiches tonight.

I like to put not only cut up lemons in the cavity but an onion cut in chunks as well as fresh sage, rosemary and thyme. Spit roasting a chicken on a rotisserie is also really good.

Lady T wrote::)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Into two different coffee cups, measure a quarter-cup of good olive oil each and half a lemon's worth of juice each, along with S and P plus dried parsley and tarragon to taste. Reserve the lemon wreckage; it'll go into the chicken cavity.

Take a good-size baking potato (russets work best) and cut into eighths; use a long-tined dinner fork to punch holes into each eighth to avoid steam explosions, then brush with olive oil/lemon/S+P/herb mixture and place in a line into baking pan. Save coffee cup of oil mix and pastry brush; you're not done with it.

Rinse 3-pound (more or less) kosher/free-range/organically raised chicken and remove unnecessary fat pads from cavity. S + P chicken all over, including cavity, then brush back and front of chicken with oil mixture and stuff cavity with 2-3 quarters of squeezed-out lemons and a few sprigs of fresh parsley and thyme. Place on top of potato bed in baking pan and place pan, potatoes, chicken, and all into 350-degree oven for the next hour. You still have one coffee cup of oil/lemon/herb/S + P mixture: save it.

After an hour of roasting, pull the pan out of the oven long enough to use a second, separate pastry brush (avoids cross-contamination) with the second cup of oil/lemon mix (same thing: safety precaution) to baste the chicken and its potato bed liberally. Throw back into 350-degree oven for second hour.

During the second hour, prepare any side dishes (e.g., steamed asparagus, one of my favorite things in the world with lemon and butter) to coordinate with the chicken. Pull chicken out after two hours and hold for 15 minutes to rest. Good stuff. Cava works well to drink with this.

That sounds amazing, will make this week! Thanks!!!!

I have started uisng one my favorite grilling methods indoors - beer can chicken using something similar to this http://www.amazon.com/Steven-Raichlen-B ... B0007ZGUK2 in my oven -

weinstein5 wrote:I have started uisng one my favorite grilling methods indoors - beer can chicken using something similar to this http://www.amazon.com/Steven-Raichlen-B ... B0007ZGUK2 in my oven -

I have done that when the weather was lousy. I use the same can holder as I do on the grill, just set in a cast iron skillet.