One would think chicken is a simple thing to master
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- February 6, 2022
- 879
One of the absolute basics of learning to cook well is to be able to produce a really good roast chicken. A cook who can turn out a good, plain roast chicken is likely to be good at the craft in general. One would think it’s a simple thing to master — how hard can it be to just throw a bird in the oven until it’s done?
That easy scenario is deceptive, and you’re going to pull a lot of undercooked, overcooked, dry, flavorless messes out of your oven before you get it right. And we are talking about a plain roast chicken here — just salt and pepper and roasting, no vegetables, no stuffing. You could possibly allow for some herbs under the skin, but that’s it.
There’s also the question of how to go about it, and there are numerous methods of roasting a chicken out there. I’ve written here before, sharing the simple way chef Jacques Pepin prepares his: 375 F, 15 minutes each on one side and then the other side, then on the back for another 20-30.
It works and is delicious, but you have to pay attention or it will come out over or undercooked. The rule especially applies here: Every bird is different, every oven is different and every day is different. You cannot stick by hard and fast times and temperatures.
I hid in my house and tried to avoid facing another birthday recently, but I got to pick what I wanted to eat for dinner. Is there any more difficult question to answer than “what do you want for your birthday dinner?” Knowing you can choose about anything you want, it’s impossible. It’s like when they expect you to know what you want to be when you grow up by the time you’re 18. I still don’t know what I want to be if I ever do something so foolish as grow up.
I settled on one of my favorites that we rarely do, a plain roast whole chicken. I considered sauerbraten, corned beef and cabbage, Vienna goulash or pot eu faux, but the chicken just sounded best at the moment. Besides, I wanted to try a recipe by Samin Nosrat from her amazing book, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.”
A whole bird is allowed to soak in a lot of salt and buttermilk for a full day before roasting with nothing else added. The buttermilk and salt brine the bird in acid and tenderize the meat so that you end up with something gloriously mahogany colored, juicy and delicious. That color is one of the things that can be tricky to achieve. A chicken can be fully cooked but an unappealing gray color.
I started the chicken the day before, and it turned out even better than I’d hoped — very moist, tender and flavorful. We served this with mushroom risotto and roasted Brussel sprouts. We used a cast iron pan for roasting the chicken, and how the pan goes into the oven matters. The legs should point to the back of the oven, and the breast should be in the center so that all the bits get done at once.
BUTTERMILK ROAST CHICKEN
1 whole fryer, giblets and neck removed from the cavity
2 cups whole fat buttermilk
2 tablespoons kosher salt, plus more
Pepper to taste
The day before you intend to serve this dish, dissolve 2 tablespoons kosher salt in two cups buttermilk. Salt the chicken generously all over and place it in a gallon-sized zippered plastic bag, then pour over the buttermilk mixture. Press out most of the air and seal the bag. Squish it around to completely coat the chicken and put the bag in a large bowl in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
Preheat your oven to 425 F.
Remove the chicken from the fridge 1 hour before cooking. Take the chicken out of the bag and scrape off most of the buttermilk. Season with pepper and place the chicken in a lightly oiled roasting pan or cast iron skillet. Put the pan in the oven with the legs of the chicken pointing to the back-left corner of the oven. After 10 minutes, reduce the heat to 400 F. After another 20 minutes, turn the pan so the legs point to the back-right corner of the oven and roast a further 30 minutes, until juice from the bird runs clear when pierced or an internal temperature of 180 F. Rest the chicken under foil for 20 minutes before carving.
(Recipe from “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat.)