A quick lesson of the day for you, and a little backstory to give it some context.
I like to roast whole chickens at home. Why?
a) It’s really easy.
b) I can throw it in the oven right when I get home from work, putz around on the Internet and watch back episodes of The Girls Next Door before Joe gets home from the gym, and by the time he is back, showered, and ready to eat, the meat is done-zo.
c) It’s versatile! You can eat the plain roasted chicken, or put it in a soup, or re-purpose it for a sandwich, or even mix it with other fixings to make a chicken salad (a delicious pesto chicken salad comes to mind).
d) You get the bonus of the carcass to make stock. It’s really a win-win situation.
Now for the past year or so, whenever I’ve done anything with a roasted bird, I tried to just salt and pepper it really well, throw it in the oven, and let it be. No herbs or lemons stuffed in the cavity (or “the butt” as Joe likes to say). Nothing lining the bottom of the pan the bird cooks in. I read in both the Bouchon cookbook and in an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated that this only creates steam, and steam is the enemy to crisp skin.
To get super crisp chicken skin — and I mean papery, crackly, seems to shatter when you stick the thermometer through it skin — you need to salt the heck out of the skin, and remove any element in the oven that creates steam. End of story.
I like to wash and dry the entire bird, then pat it really dry with a paper towel. Again, what does residual rinse water, plus a scorching hot oven equal? STEAM.

Then, salt the heck out of that sucker. Don’t be shy. Get it all over the breast and the top part of the legs, then do this number on it: (more…)
Filed under: Food, Kitchen Basics, Poultry | 3 Comments »











































