Simple roast chicken doesn’t require a fancy stove or special equipment

Simple roast chicken doesn’t require a fancy stove or special equipment
                        
Black Maria: a slang term for a police van used to transport prisoners. (From Wikipedia) This is also the printable term used to describe the range at my house. “Range” is too polite here, really. The homely term “stove” is better. The walls around it are probably blistered. Not from heat, but from the barrage of blistering language hurled at it when things boil over, cakes emerge like pita bread, and gently warmed leftovers appear at the table as asparagus jerky. Both oven and burners are either off, or thermonuclear. The only thing more roundly cursed at my house is the unruly privet hedge in the backyard. I tell you all this to say that I do not have a fancy range on which to cook. Yours is very likely better. You’re already one up on me. But, I know how to truss a chicken. In a moment, you will too. Plain Roast Chicken This is just the sort of thing I like to cook. It’s quick, simple, cheap, impressive and delicious. The ingredients are few: A chicken, salt, pepper. You can easily dress it up if you like, but there isn’t much room in the dressing-down direction. Get a whole chicken, preferably never frozen. If you have a butcher shop you like, find out when they have whole fryers available. Butchers, unsurprisingly, like to butcher things; they see a chicken, they cut it up. You want to intercede beforehand. Get a pre-packaged one from the grocery store, if all else fails. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Place the chicken on its back, pull out the innards and neck, if present, and place them in a small pot with water to cover, and set them on the stovetop. Bring to a boil, and then simmer at low heat. There will be bits of fat just inside the bird on each side. Pull these out, chop them a bit, and set aside. Meanwhile, at the neck end, feel for the wishbone at the opening. You know what one looks like, and you’ll feel it at the top of the neck opening. Use a sharp knife to slice the flesh downward at each side of it, hook your finger around it, and pull it out. Salt (1 tsp.) and pepper (1/2 tsp.) the bird inside and out. Get a length of string that will not melt. Not kite string—cotton string. The middle of the string goes under the projecting tail (traditionally, “The Pope’s Nose”), pull the ends of the string up, around the legs, closing the opening, then bring it around the neck end. Turn it on its side, and tie it off in a simple knot, as tightly as you can. It makes the chicken a nice, compact package. Trussing a chicken is a fundamental cooking skill, and it is worth mastering. Heat an oven-proof (no plastic parts) skillet until your hand hovering over it says it’s hot. Then add the chicken fat bits until they melt. Add the chicken on its side. After two minutes, flip it to the other side, another two minutes, and onto its front, then again to the back. Put it back on a side, and put the pan into the hot oven. Every 15 minutes, carefully pull it out (use mitts!), flip it (side, side, back), and put it back. After about an hour and fifteen minutes, it will stop “singing.” You’ll hear lots of popping and sizzling, and then this will subside a bit. It is done when a leg wiggles easily and there is no sign of pink, at all, in the juice. Remove it from the oven, transfer it to a platter and let it rest from its ordeal. Pour off all but a couple of tablespoons of fat, place the pan on the stove over medium heat, and add a cup or so of that broth you made with the neck (or water). Optionally, if you have brandy, wine, bourbon, whatever, add a little now. Boil this down by half, scraping up the browned bits. This is your sauce. Strain it into a bowl. Carve the chicken into serving pieces, and add the sauce. Be grateful for your superior oven.


Loading next article...

End of content

No more pages to load