I haz it.
I haven’t played much in the food threads here. Partly, it’s because I didn’t want to step on established traditions; partly because life is too short to write about everything. But in the end, why not — and I just enjoyed something y’all might, so what’s the harm in using up some of the Intertube’s surplus bytes.
That would have been a (to me) novel twist on that Broadway standard of a supper, roast chicken.
A roasted bird would be my ur-comfort food. Some of my fondest early memories are of trying to stab my mother with a fork as she maneuvered to steal the crisp chicken skin I saved for last. My sister is still pissed at the times Mum got away with this evil ploy — and this even though our Mum is fifteen years gone beyond the reach of our griefing on this point. It’s this kind of memory that makes me think I should put away as much cash in my son’s therapy fund as I do his college trove.
I’ve used a lot of recipes to come up with a good bird since I left my mother’s home. Over the last couple of years, I’ve often turned to one from Carol Field’s In Nonna’s Kitchen, in which you stuff the cavity of the bird with a cup or so pitted kalamata or niçoise olives, a few sprigs of parsley and a cut and squeezed half lemon, skewer the cavity shut, squeeze some lemon juice and drizzle some olive oil on the outside (lots of salt too) — and then roast upside down in 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes before flipping it over and cooking it breast-side up ’till done. Good times.
I’ve also greatly enjoyed roast chicken porn. I first encountered Gordon Hammersley’s recipe — legendary in Boston — in Julia Child’s In Julia’s Kitchen With The Master Chefs. Given Hammersley’s cook-twice method, well enough suited to a restaurant kitchen, but not so much to my distracted condition, it’s one I’ve left better read than done. Then there was the time I picked up at a remainder-price the ultimate food-porn cookbook, Alain Ducasse’s Flavors of France. This is truly one you buy for the pictures; Ducasse demands your whole paycheck and more skill than I can muster to put together just about any of his dishes. But the recipe — well, if I ever choose to devote at least thirty bucks to a chicken dinner, maybe more, along with the better part of a weekend in prep, this will be the one. And I may yet try, sometime.
But all of this is prelude to a very quick recommendation. This week I came across Melissa Clark’s video and recipe in The New York Times for what is for me a real variation in method on roasting a bird — the assignment which is to food writing what the 10 ways to please your man/woman is to the sex guides in the women’s and men’s books (a hardy perennial on which there is almost never anything new to say). Clark proposed splaying the bird — cutting through the skin and thigh joints to get the dark meat to lie flat — and than roasting the chicken in a very hot pre-heated skillet.
My wife and I tried out the recipe last night, with just a bit of deviation — we used scallions and shallots instead of ramps, for example, and kept the temperature down to 425 degrees from her 500. Next time we plan to add a few elements to the vegetables with which the chicken communes — fennel, perhaps, and maybe a little bit of tomato. But I’m here to tell you that the basic idea worked great, turning out a wonderful, mellow chicken in very little time, with a trivially easy prep.
All of which is to say — as long as you are so nice as to ask — then, yes, I happily endorse this path to a good night’s supper.
So, with that, I guess you could think of this as a Balloon Juice comfort food open thread.
Image: Peter Jakob Horemans, Still life with plucked chicken, apple and carrot, 1768
meadrus
Alton Brown did a pretty simple butterflied roast chicken that makes a jus to die for.
AndyG
I go for the minimalist approach – get a nice fresh happily raised chicken, wash, dry, truss, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt and roast at 450°C for 50-60 minutes. Let rest for 10 minutes (baste in its fat if you want) and then consume. You can add all sorts of bells and whistles, but it really doesn’t get much better than that.
General Stuck
Before it’s all over, I’m betting even a cold fish like Mitt Romney is going to regret getting a nomination from a party of crazy people/
He is going to get a lot of this kind of thing, as the town halls meeting pile up before election day. He fairly well did slither by this time by not answering a question weighing on the wingnut mind.
Console
My family is from eastern north carolina, we threw them motherfuckers on the grill.
psycholinguist
I pretty much follow Andy’s recipe to a T here. I would recommend learning to truss if you don’t already know how. It was a revelation, the lemon or carrot or apple you throw in the cavity will stay nice and contained, and it makes the bird look pretty for presentation.
TaMara (BHF)
Love roast chicken. Yum.
joes527
My foolproof method:
I have one of those beer can chicken racks. Forget the beer can. Just use the rack to hold the chicken upright with the cavity wide open. Pull out the pads of fat on the sides of the cavity and tuck them into the neck cavity under the skin. They will melt as the bird cooks and keep it moist end to end. I used to play with high heat, and that worked well. But it made such a mess of the oven that I have gone back to using more normal temperature. I let the chicken rest when it is done and make pan gravy with the drippings. Virtually all the good bits are stuck to the pan. All the liquid in the pan is fat. I pour that off and use a light white wine to loosen the tasty bits from the pan. When that is reduced, I use chi ken stock and another reduction to finish the gravy.
Better than mom used to make.
gaz
Meh. shot my usb bus, thanks dust and a short – and my i key on this keyboard types i0 when i try to type i.. and my shift key doesn’t work… arg… this is my backup because when my usb bus blew it took my good keyboard with it.
fun times. i need to go get a keyboard asap…
at least my machine works again… arg. it only cost me a gallon of local beer for a new mobo and case… and some time … so at least that’s good. guess none of my shift keys work. yay
erlking
Judy Rogers from SF’s legendary Zuni Grill does an incredible roast chicken. Of course, she salts them 3 days beforehand and has the best wood-fired ovens imaginable, but a damn tasty approximation, derived from her cookbook, is at smitten kitchen or just google “zuni roast chicken.” It’s a crowd pleaser.
The bread salad with currants and mustard greens is to die for.
Ash Can
When I was a grad student renting a house with a bunch of other grad students, I quickly learned that whole chickens were manna from heaven. They were dirt cheap per pound, made the entire house smell fabulous while roasting, could feed the whole household on a Sunday evening (along with fresh potatoes and whatever fresh veggies were on sale at the grocery store), and the bones could make enough soup (again making the whole house smell fabulous) to once again feed everybody regally. With the help of some veggies, potatoes, and dumplings, I could get a dozen great meals out of a single chicken.
Grover Gardner
I LOVE roast chicken. My wife HATES chicken–remnant of college days when it was all she could afford. My Dad, too–to much chicken in the Army!!
Sometimes we go to a fancy restaurant with friends and I ordered chicken, and people are like, “Dude! You can eat chicken at home!” But I rarely get to. For me it’s like a treat!
gaz
hehehe. this is what i get for letting my friend drunk wire a replacement fan to my video card. i had hacked a fan onto it before, but it had since died due to gunk buildup. anyway – didn’t work and my video card just broiled itself. i’ve had far too much fun today. thank god for onboard vid… lol.. on the plus side my machine is *much* quieter now. *grin*
asiangrrlMN
Roast chicken is the noms, for sure. Now I’m hungry.
Martin
I’m sticking by my smoked rotisserie chicken. Takes a little longer, but I do 2 at a time. And if I have another couple of hours to play with, I’ll shove a couple of racks of ribs in there to keep them company.
Joey Maloney
No question: Alton Brown’s/Shirley Corriher’s simple roast chicken recipe rocked my world.
My simple variation is to roast the (whole, unbutterflied) bird in a cast-iron skillet resting on a bed of thick-sliced potatoes. That keeps the back of the bird out of the grease so its skin crisps nicely as well, and the potatoes turn out awesome.
But my childhood comfort food is hamburger stroganoff, with a simple homemade substitute for your standard can of cream-of-substance soup.
1 lb. ground beef
1 large onion, coarse dice
half a bulb of garlic, smashed and diced
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
2 Tbsp each butter and flour
1 cup milk
1 cup sour cream
Sautee the mushrooms in the butter over medium heat until they give up their liquid. Stir in the flour, brown for a minute or two until it gives off a nutty aroma. Add the milk slowly, raise heat until it just starts to boil, reduce to low simmer and stir until thickened.
Brown the ground beef and onion in a skillet. Add the garlic when the beef is almost browned. Salt and pepper to taste. Mix in the mushroom sauce, simmer for ten minutes. Turn off the heat, stir in the sour cream. Serve over pasta or rice.
smintheus
All a roast chicken needs is a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and a rub down with olive oil and salt. Wanna get fancy then roast some parsnips and potatoes in the pan. Anything more is just time you could better spend on other dishes.
Yutsano
Admit it: you’re Jeffrey Garten. :)
A roast Cornish hen is probably one of my favourite meals ever. I even break Alton’s no stuffing rule for one of those bad boys. It’s not only delicious, but bloody useful for the carcass. Stock is one of the most delicious smells ever.
@asiangrrlMN: Hi hon. I’m mean hon. Told my mom what I had for dinner (pancetta with red cabbage and potatoes, nom) and she wanted.
Grover Gardner
@Joey Maloney:
Oh man, I love this too, my mom made it all the time. But you need to add the consomme and lemon juice for that mouth-watering tang!
http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Hamburger-Stroganoff-Allrecipes
Keith
I tend to use Thomas Keller’s roast chicken recipe. Rinse the chicken, dry it on inside and out to enhance crispiness, hit it with salt and roast for an hour at 450.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Yutsano:
My wife makes Korean chicken soup with cornish game hens. I’ll have to ask what she puts in for spices, but garlic is one(it’s Korean). It’s quite yummy, the meat falls off the bone. Served, of course, with kimchee.
Yutsano
@BillinGlendaleCA: Probably ginger and gochujang, but I’ve been learning a lot of Korean cooking techniques from this woman. Her name means “hammer” and she’s a hoot to watch!
Warren Terra
@General Stuck:
Unfortunately, you, your link, and pretty much everyone else is missing the real story here. Yes, Mitt got asked an insane question, because his party is full of people several bricks shy of a load. But people are describing his answer as being nonresponsive. This is true, of course – he ignored or perhaps didn’t hear her insanity. But what he did say is really quite scary:
There is a belief in the fringes of right-wing politicized Christianity that the foundations of our country are to be found not in the political theories of the late eighteenth century as worked out in Philadelphia (and revised since then), but in God. This is why you see some of their political representatives saying that we must consult the Bible (the word of God) in order to properly follow the text it “inspired” in the Constitution. The people who say these things tend to stress the importance of the Declaration Of Independence (a political document that is not law an does not define the structure of our country) and to imply it has equal status with the Constution – because unlike the Constitution the Declaration mentions “Our Creator”.
And that’s just the nearly acceptable version of the theory, the one espoused by the nutballs who just want a theocracy (such as 1996 Republican nominee for WA Governor Ellen Craswell, who was heavily involved in this movement). A fringe of this fringe is the Neo-Nazis, who call their version of this idea “Christian Identity”. And I’ve seen claims that the Mormons have their own version of this divinely-inspired Constitution notion – one apparently heavily pushed by Glenn Beck.
—
My family recipe for roast chickens involves basting in a mixture of jelly and butter a few times over the course of fifteen minutes at 425 degrees; putting wine and chunks of onion, carrot, celery, and garlic in the pan; and then roasting at 325 degrees for about 90 minutes, basting a couple of times with pan droppings. Never fails.
kdaug
Ack. Can’t do fennel. If I wanted licorice I’d buy some chicken-candy or something.
Don’t get me wrong, I like strong flavors. Stuff that fucker with jalapenos and/or habaneros, I’m on board with the wife in tow.
But a slow-cooked bird? Food for the week? Cook one day, eat for seven?
Oh, hellz yeah. Nom-nom, right up my alley.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Yutsano:
What the wife makes is a variation of samgeatong, she doesn’t stuff the cornish game hen. I don’t think she puts ginger in it, but I’ll ask her.
Bubblegum Tate
Hey, I have that Nonna’s Kitchen book! But I haven’t done the roast chicken recipe in there. I tend to keep it fairly simple: Stuff cavity with onion, garlic, rosemary, thyme, and lemon. Put herb butter under and over the skin, salt and pepper liberally, put it into an oven at 450. You’ll get the materials for a pretty good pan sauce, too–just de-fat if you so desire, add some white wine, reduce, and add a pat of butter just before serving.
Also, too, I am presently on vacation in Italy, and had an amazing roasted chicken in Florence yesterday–my fiancee (engagement happened about a week ago in Bologna) and I got it to go and ate it at the laundromat while we washed our clothes. So delicious.
Yutsano
@Bubblegum Tate:
OMEDETO GOZAIMASU!! First act as affianced back home: go on diets after working off the food. Worth every molecule you’ll consume though. :)
Joseph Nobles
@Warren Terra: Wow. The Declaration and Constitution were “probably inspired”? Both Jefferson and Madison would tell Romney he was full of shit on that one.
Bubblegum Tate
@Yutsano:
You ain’t lying! One of my fiancee’s friends insisted that we’d lose weight on this trip because we’d be walking around so much. While it’s true we’re doing a ton of walking, we’re also doing a ton of eating, and that whole “lose weight” thing is an absolute pipe dream. Not that I’m complaining, of course, because it is absolutely worth it–ragu, prosciutto di Parma, lasagna, tortellini en brodo, ribollita, and last night here in Cinque Terre, the best seafood risotto on the planet. I’ll do some extra exercising for all that!
Bubblegum Tate
Gah! Stuck in moderation and I don’t know why.
Joseph Nobles
@Bubblegum Tate: Dude, you’re in Florence. Your comments should go to moderation just on general principle. :D
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: You are mean! I had roast chicken for lunch*, and one of my boys (Raven) almost ran away with it. That’s what I get for eating in the dark!
*About half an hour ago.
Bubblegum Tate
@Joseph Nobles:
Actually, I’m in Cinque Terre (Manarola to be exact) right now, but your point is taken :-)
Valdivia
The classic and super simple from Marcella Hazan (in classic of Italian cooking)–stuff the cavity with two whole lemons rolled a few times over the counter under the palm of your hand to often and pricked with a fork 10 times each. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook and cavity loosely bound shut and perfection.
In later years because of my obsession with bacon I added bacon under the skin but te original is perfect as is. She even talked about it in her interview with NPR last year.
p.a.
herb butter under the skin is nice- I prefer tarragon, but many find it too aggressive a taste. High heat doesn’t work for it- the greens will burn. love rosemary, but I prefer to add it later in the cooking so it doesn’t dry out and add a burnt, woody taste. it is a hassle doing it that way.
i find I’m incapable of planning far enough ahead to brine.
chicken parts oven roasted with italian sausage and potatoes is a wonderful wintertime dinner, and your cardiologist will appreciate that you utilize the wonders of porkfat in your cooking.
Ksmiami
@Keith: Love the Keller roast chicken – it may be his simplest recipe – I have made it twice and the skin turns out perfect.
Starfish
This is about turkey and not chicken, but I really enjoyed it after spending many months roasting a chicken about every week before i just did not have as much time anymore.
debbie
“Some of my fondest early memories are of trying to stab my mother with a fork as she maneuvered to steal the crisp chicken skin I saved for last.”
As a kid, my grandfather would go after my fingers with his electric knife whenever I tried to grab some of the turkey skin while he was carving.
Bob2
Speaking of chicken skin, you can get it straight up at quite a few restaurants now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/dining/chicken-skin-beguiles-chefs.html?_r=2
Oddly the article doesn’t seem to list some Chinese restaurants that have been doing it longer.
Oh right, and Peruvian Roasted Chicken is delicious
http://bbq.about.com/od/chickenrecipes/r/bl70730a.htm
Scratch
Crispy chicken skin is something that is nearly as divine as bacon.
Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing with cabbage and mushrooms, peas, gravy, yeah, I’ll do that a couple of times every winter and feel very happy when digesting a sinfully indulgent meal.
vtr
Speaking of hamburgers…a few weeks ago after reading about pink slime, we decided to grind our own. Our local IGA has pretty good meat, and we can sometimes buy a five pound chuck roast at the same price/pound as ground beef. And, it’s ammonia-free! Cut into small chunks, put it in the freezer for 30 minutes, ans grind it up. We have a KitchenAide grinder attachment. Mix into the grind a slice or two of bacon for flavor and fat. Sear each side over charcoal (please) then cook over indirect heat til done. Cabot cheese. And you can break a couple of small twigs off the crab apple tree in the front yard to add a touch of smoke.
chopper
marcella hazan’s chicken with two lemons.
otherwise, i’ll either spatch the cock and cook it under a brick or toss it in the slow cooker for 6 hours.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
Are the relatively higher sides of a skillet necessary, or would a cast iron griddle work for that recipe? I don’t presently have a cast iron skillet (it’s on my housewarming gift list) but I do have a cast iron griddle with grill ridges on one side and a smooth cooking surface on the other. The smooth side has a trough to catch excess grease and it is rimmed on the sides, but only about an eighth to a quarter-inch.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@AndyG: I think you mean F not C – 450 degrees C would be hotter than any conventional oven I’ve ever seen.
Tim O
My fondest memory of Roast Chicken: My wife and I traveled on our honeymoon to visit friends in Columbia Falls, Maine. It’s about 30 miles from the Nova Scotia border. The friends are artists/professors and they bought the two school houses that were abandoned in this once thriving ship building community. They had electricity but had not set up gas or propane. They had an antique wood stove for cooking, and for heating bath water. Very rustic and quaint. They hung fabric, tapestries and batiks along with wild flowers in a make shift “bridal suite” for us!
Dinner was Roasted chicken in the wood oven, surrounded by heads of whole garlic, tomatoes and onions, couscous on the side and for dessert, fresh baked Maine blueberry pie. OMG I can taste it now . . .
This was followed up the next day with a fresh picked mussle bake down on the water. All we took was a pound of butter, a pot for melting it and a case of beer. Heaven!
muddy
I rub my chicken down with Herb de Provence, the lavender really makes it for me. I fold the wings up but otherwise let it splay in a relaxed fashion on top of a grid placed in a dutch oven.
As far as Tom and his skin stealing mother are concerned, when my kid tried something like that I called him a motherforker.