A Very Good Roasted Chicken

by | Dec 23, 2014 | Meat

The Second Lunch Roasted Chicken Before The Second Lunch Roasted Chicken After

I ended up with a chicken in my Walden Local Meat CSA this month, and because my freezer is already overflowing, I knew that I’d have to defrost the bird and use it relatively soon. When you get a really great free range and pastured chicken, you want to treat it decently, and give it a good show.

Of course I searched around for a recipe for the very best roast chicken, perfect roast chicken, killer roast chicken – if you consult with the internet, people really love Ina Garten’s chicken, and Julia’s, and my dear Jamie Oliver‘s. And everyone loves Zuni chicken – the dry brine technique makes for a wonderfully moist bird, and I love the Zuni Cafe Cookbook (Judy Rodgers will be forever missed).

From experience, some of the very best roast chicken is from Ad Hoc at Home – which is the recipe that I would have used if I had wanted to follow a recipe to the letter. I have a thing for recipe following, which is to say, unless I’m testing a recipe for a client, I rarely stick to one. I can at best say that I was inspired by this cookbook, which is a very inspiring cookbook indeed! And I will say that if you are for any reason nervous about roasting chickens, just don’t be. If it turns out awful, well, you just chop up your chicken and put it in soup for tomorrow. Or if you actually burn your chicken, you have my permission to go out and get dinner.

Ad Hoc at Home

This chicken ended up being more ad hoc than Ad Hoc at Home.

Because, well, I read the recipe and didn’t have enough time to let it come to room temperature before cooking it. Or have any twine to truss it. Or fresh herbs. I did have a lemon though. Or at least half of one. And it had been sitting in the fridge for a week. I didn’t want to let any of these problems stop me. There would be chicken on the table for dinner, or else!

So I turned the oven up to preheat at 475, and I cut up some potatoes, and tossed them in olive oil, salt, and dried thyme as a base. And then I coated the chicken in the same combination of olive oil, salt, dried thyme, and nestled the bird on top of the potatoes. Then gracefully put a lemon up the rear end. And I buttered up the breasts. So then I popped in the chicken for 25 minutes at the 475, and turned it down to 400 for 45 more minutes. (This is a 5 lb. chicken mind you. You could probably do less if it was smaller.)

Then I turned off the oven with it in there and went to pick up Devon and go to the gym (about an hour in the warm but off oven.) And then I forgot that I was voluntold to make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, so I turned it back onto 450, set a very precise 17 minute timer, and told Devon to turn it off when it beeped, as I went to the store. He turned it off… and then took it out instead of leaving it in the oven as I had intended, so the potatoes could finish cooking. So it “rested” for 15 minutes on the counter, which was only a good thing for this chicken. Resting the meat allows it to redistribute meat juice. And then we (finally) feasted – a big bowl of potatoes (which could have admittedly used a little bit more cooking, but were mostly delicious) and perfect chicken, with crispy skin. I’m still kind of amazed how well it turned out.

Do you have a favorite roast chicken recipe? I’d love some more inspiration!

The first of the year.

by | Jan 1, 2013 | chicken, Pantry Staples, Turkish

Why, hello! Has the first day of this new year treated you well?

Our celebrations were quite low key last night because we’ve both been a little under the weather. We started out with the movie Haywire, but despite my serious strong-girl crush on Gina Carano, the film committed the cardinal sin of bad action films: it was boring. So boring, in fact, that I turned it off after twenty minutes. We salvaged the evening with pizza, ice cream and several episodes of MI-5, and made it (reluctantly) until midnight.

Once we realized that the world wasn’t ending, we passed out and slept in until 10. Glorious!

Today we gathered ourselves and ventured out into the world. Devon needed snow boots, and I hadn’t left the house for a while. We drove to the L.L. Bean outlet, ate lunch at the salad bar at Whole Foods, and came back to work on a few new projects, draft some more resolutions, and think about my word of the year. For dinner, I thought I’d set us straight with some salads and roast chicken.

This is one of my favorite meals because it’s simple, light, and relatively foolproof. Which of course means that I had my first kitchen failure of the year – I started my chicken skin side down in my greased pan, but the skin decided to stick nearly entirely to the pan when I flipped it over. Alas! Good thing that rosemary and oregano infused chicken minus the skin still tastes good!

I topped my salad with some tomatoes, a few baby mozzarella balls, good black olives, and some rolled up slices of pastırma, a Turkish cured meat. I made a dressing with some of the pan drippings, some of the olive oil that I keep my black olives in, and a little bit of sherry vinegar. It was a solid start to the year!

After dinner, I grabbed all of our bones and put them in my little workhorse Crockpot to make a light stock overnight. I’ll probably use it for some soup lunches through the week. Nothing fancy, but you can never have enough chicken-water in the house. Meat tea!

To top it off, we had kazandibi, a sweet Turkish dessert which means “bottom of the pot” and features a lovely layer of caramelization over a rich thickened milk pudding. In Turkey, pudding is by far one of the most popular forms of dessert, and pudding shops are more ubiquitous than pastry shops.

I picked up a few of these at Sevan in Watertown, and since they aren’t the easiest to make well at home, they were a real treat. Traditionally you’d top them with a dusting of cinnamon and maybe some ground pistachios, but since I’m impatient, I ate it cold from the fridge with nothing on it.

After dinner, I set to work making one of my favorite kitchen resolutions happen: wash all dishes and wipe down counters before going to bed each night. Nothing like waking up in the morning to a clean kitchen and feeling ready to start the day on the right note!

Here’s to a wonderful new year ahead of us!