The Multitude of Roast Chicken Recipes

It seems that the simpler something is, the more methods of doing it there are.  This is definitely the case of roast chicken, for which there seems to be a countless number of methods, 90% of which work.  I’ve tried stuffing the chicken with lemons a la Marcella Hazan, trussing it, leaving it untrussed, roasting at high heat, roasting at two temperatures, rubbing the bird with butter, rubbing it with just salt… you get the point.  Nearly all of those methods have turned out well. 

Thomas Keller alone has printed two methods of simply roasted in chicken in his cookbooks.  Up until now, my standby roast chicken recipe had been this one from the Bouchon cookbook in which a trussed chicken is seasoned only with salt and roasted at 450F for 45 minutes. Keller's latest cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home, contains yet another, completely different recipe for roast chicken.  In the more complicated Ad Hoc incarnation, the chicken is stuffed with garlic and thyme, trussed, seasoned with salt and pepper, rubbed with canola oil, and topped with butter (which I might add, blatantly disobeys his instructions in the Bouchon recipe), then roasted over a bed of root vegetables.  Additionally, unlike the single oven temperature in the Bouchon recipe, the Ad Hoc recipe calls for roasting the chicken first at 475F for 25 minutes, then at 400F for 40 minutes. 

So, what gives? Did Keller have some sort of roast chicken enlightenment between writing his two books?  Is one method better than the other?  You be the judge:

First, a chicken I roasted using the Ad Hoc at Home method the other week:

Now, here is a chicken I roasted using the Bouchon method a while back:

The Ad Hoc method may look better due to the extra browning, but both chickens were very tasty.  Without eating them at the same time, I can't say which one was better, although I will probably stick to the Bouchon method most nights for its quicker execution.  I just look at them both as two very good methods of producing the same simple thing.  

What is your favorite method of roasting chicken?

Roast Chicken: My Dish of Perfection

I think that most amateur cooks can agree that consistency is our greatest weakness. As our confidence in the kitchen increases, we free ourselves from the entrapment of recipes and measuring cups. Yet what was a tablespoon yesterday will be a teaspoon tomorrow. We might achieve culinary greatness with one dish, but we struggle to repeat it on a second try.

Part of the fun of cooking is trying new dishes to reach that great feeling (and taste) that a successful dish brings, just as an amateur golfer might play through holes and holes of frustration just for that one perfect drive. So we deserve to pat ourselves on the backs when we do produce a truly great dish that we can make time and time again with no recipes and no measuring utensils.

With that, I bring you my roast chicken. No matter what I season it with, it comes out perfectly every time. It's a modest dish, but it is one that I cook consistently time and time again.

Roasted Chicken with Salsa Verde from A16: Food + Wine

To me, a new cookbook is like a new toy to child; shortly after buying one, I just can't stop playing with it. In the case of A16: Food + Wine, I have a new toy that I don't think I will ever grow bored of. I've already sung my praises for this cookbook, but I would like to report on yet another excellent dish that I cooked from it: Roasted Chicken with Salsa Verde.

The recipe is actually for tiny roasted young chickens, but I had picked up a nice 3lb. Giannone chicken, so used that instead. I also ran out of dried oregano so I substituted dried sage for some of the oregano that the recipe called for. The chicken still turned out beautifully: a wonderfully crispy skin, juicy and flavorful meat. The salsa verde is excellent as well; my girlfriend who abhors parsely gave it her approval, so don't be alarmed by the cup of parsley that goes into the sauce.

There are two keys to this dish. First, spend a little extra to get a quality bird; chicken quality makes an especially big difference when it comes to simply roasted chicken. Second, the chicken benefits greatly from the two day seasoning process. Planning a recipe two days in advance can be a hassle, but after two days, the seasoning permeates the meat nicely. As an added bonus, this process allows you to just toss the chicken in the oven when you are ready to cook it rather than taking the time to wash, dry, and season the chicken first.

Roasted Chicken with Salsa Verde

For the Chicken:

• 1 good-quality 3lb. chicken, washed and thoroughly dried
• 3 Tb kosher salt (yes, 3; don't be shy)
• 1 1/2 Tb dried oregano
• 1 1/2 Tb dried sage
• 1/2 ts dried chile flakes

For the Salsa Verde:

• 1cup flat leaf parsley
• 1/2 ts dried chile flakes
• 1/2 ts capers, drained
• 1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 of a lemon
• small clove of garlic (or 1/2 of a large clove)
  
• pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Two days prior to cooking, grind oregano, sage, and chile flakes in a spice grinder. Rub chicken skin and cavity with salt. Then, rub spice mixture on skin and in cavity. Cover and refrigerate for two days.
2. Cook chicken at 450F until cooked through, about 50 minutes. Meanwhile, make the salsa verde.
3. For salsa verde, add parsley, breadcrumbs, chile flakes, capers, and garlic to food processor. Pulse until well blended. While running processor, drizzle in olive oil. Add lemon juice and pinch of salt and process to blend.
4. Once chicken is cooked, let it rest for 10 min. Serve with salsa verde.
   

New Amsterdam Market and Marcella Hazan’s Roast Chicken

Last Sunday, I schlepped over to the New Amsterdam Market at New York’s South Street Seaport. This is the third installation of the market, which runs a few days a year and and features some of the region’s top proponents of local and sustainable food. The goal is for the market to become a permanent fixture of the South Street Seaport, but for now, we Manhattan foodlovers must settle for having some of the region’s top purveyors and producers of fruits, vegetables, meats, cheese, bread, and more in the same place only a few times a year. It’s like a Greenmarket on steroids.

After stuffing my face with bread and cheese samples; an excellent ham, pickle, and butter sandwich from Marlowe and Sons; and a slice of delicious caramelized leak and ricotta tart from a baker I don’t remember, I began to think about dinner. I did not have much cash on me, so I passed by two of my favorite Greenmarket meat producers, 3 Corner FIeld Farm and Flying Pigs Farm, and set my sight on the $5 chickens at Bo Bo Chicken. I was unfamiliar with Bo Bo chicken, but the friendly lady at the stall informed me that they sell super fresh (i.e. less than a day from the slaughterhouse) poultry. She told me they sell mostly to Asian markets, but also deliver fresh poultry to some of New York’s finest restaurants. I bought a medium-sized chicken for $5 dollars, and they also gave me a free tote bag with an ice pack so I could safely get the chicken home to the Upper East Side in this 90 degree weather. A great deal for a what sounded like a great chicken. Here’s what it looked like when I put it on my cutting board to prepare dinner:

This chicken was so fresh that it had seen little in the way of a butcher’s table. I had only dealt with headless and feetless chicken before, but I was able to quickly get the chicken into it’s more familiar form with a few chops of my knife. I threw the head and feet into the freezer for a stock I will be making later down the road.

To prepare the chicken, I used a recipe for roasted chicken with lemon’s from Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Roasting a chicken does not get much easier than this. Just take two lemons, roll them and squish them, poke a bunch of holes into each, and stuff them into the cavity of the chicken. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, truss it, and into the oven it goes. Here’s what it all looked like after cooking at 350 degrees for an hour, then 20 minutes at 400 degrees:

Unfortunately, I failed to dry the chicken well enough after I washed it, so the skin did not get as brown or as crispy as I would have liked. Thankfully, the meat was deliciously moist and flavorful with the lemon juice that it absorbed while in the oven. Marcella even convinced me to retract my statement that the best roast chickens are cooked with generous amounts of butter. This chicken had no butter, and was as delicious as any roast chicken I have made. It did, however, have a good amount of salt, so I stand by my belief that salt is a roast chicken’s best friend.