You’ve got to know your chicken

Sorry to the vegetarians this week.  We’re going to go over the basic roasted chicken.

Why?  Because by roasting a chicken, you can make several decent meals throughout the week (if you buy a big enough bird). Because it’s fall, and anything roasted sounds good.  Because for some reason, as a meat-eater, I’m more comfortable with eating the whole bird rather than just buying cut up little bits of breast meat and never thinking about what happens to the rest of it.  And because it shouldn’t be scary.

Ingredients:

A chicken

Salt

That’s it. 

The Dry Brine

I’ve found the best (and simplest) way to roast a bird is through a process called dry brining.  I attribute this knowledge to Russ Parsons, who for the past three or four years has written articles on dry brining your thanksgiving turkey for the Los Angeles Times and appears on the local public radio around that time explaining the process.

Unlike wet brining, which requires a bucket of salt water large enough to hold your bird and a refrigerated place to put it, dry brining consists of rubbing salt on the bird.  Also, I happen to like the texture of the meat better after dry brining.

Parsons’ formula is to rub about a tablespoon of salt per 5 pounds of bird and then let the bird sit in the refrigerator for 3 days.

I’ve seen several explanations for what is exactly happening during this time, but the simplest seems to be that the structure of the protein in the chicken is changed by the salt in such a way that the cells will hold moisture at a higher temperature and thus the meat will turn out moister.

For your basic chicken, while the formula does lead to an incredibly moist and flavorful  chicken, it’s not necessary to go quite that far for a tasty roast.  Chickens, for one, don’t have the nasty reputation that turkeys do of drying out.  Chickens are smaller and less meaty, so the skin does a better job of keeping it moist.

Nonetheless, two things can be learned from this: salt liberally and salt early.  For a medium-sized bird, when you  rub salt all over it, don’t just shake a few crystals on but aim for about a teaspoon of salt.  And the earlier you can do this, the more time the salt will have to work its way throughout the bird rather than just staying on the skin.

Of course, this doesn’t always happen.  Ideally, when you buy the bird, rub the salt on, toss it back in its bag and cook it a couple days later.  More often than not though, I find myself doing this the night before or in the morning before I go to work.  It still works.  It’s a chicken.

The Roast

Turn the oven up high – very high.  Around 450 F or so.

Once your bird is salted, you’ve got to truss it (unless it came that way). Trussing is just basically tying its legs & wings down so the whole thing is a compact ball of bird.  If you haven’t already, check inside the bird to make sure there’s not a bag of goodies – the giblets.  If there is, save these parts for a broth, cooking later, or feed them to a pet.

Then, with some cotton string (nothing that will melt like nylon) wrap around the ends of the legs a few times, cross over or under the body, and wrap across the wings.  Pull tight and tie a knot.  You can use this configuration or anything else that keeps things from flopping around.  There’s no right way.

Now pop this bird into a roasting pan.  If you don’t have a pan with a rack in the bottom so the chicken is not left to swim in its own juices, get a regular pan and chop some chunks of potatoes, onions, or other veggies to make a platform for your chicken to be propped up on.  Then place the chicken with the breast side up in the pan on the veggie chunks or rack.  If you’re not sure which side is the breast, look for the tail – that’s the opposite side and should be down.

Cook it in the oven at the high heat for 15-20 minutes to give the skin a head start in the browning, then lower the oven temperature to about 350 or 325 (low-medium).  Once it’s been in there an hour or hour and a half or so it’s probably done.  The first few times you do this, you might want to use a meat thermometer.   Stick the thermometer in the meatiest part of the chicken (breast or thigh, just look for thick meat) and once it reads 165 F, it’s safe to serve.

If you don’t have a thermometer, once the juices run clear (no blood), you’re good to go.  Once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll get a feel.

You’re done – you’ve roasted a bird.  I usually toss some chopped up veggies with garlic, olive oil, and herbs, and roast those at the same time.

Next up, what to do with the leftovers . . . 

(Small bird, large pan)