Friday, April 7, 2017

How to Roast a Chicken

A whole chicken. What a deal. Purdue, on sale for .99 cents a pound. Seven pounds of protein for seven bucks.

You can have a couple of nice chicken dinners. With what's left, we can make chicken chili. Maybe some chicken salad too. When there is nothing left, we can make stock from the bones and the chicken neck in the gizzard bag. But, it all starts with the roast chicken.

Cut up the vegetables and the fruit that we will stuff inside the chicken cavity. They will provide moisture.



For flavor, season the cavity with salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, thyme and bay leaves. Stuff with the ingredients above.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Oil the chicken skin with vegetable oil. Why not butter or olive oil? Because either one of those will tend to burn at a high temperature. Season with salt, pepper and sage. Don't skimp on the salt. It's a big bird. Rub the seasoning into the skin.



Season the back and the breast. Tie up the legs. Why? I don't know. Every recipe you see wants you to "truss" the chicken. Far be it from me to break with tradition.



Pour one to two cups of water into the roasting pan. With the moisture in the chicken cavity and the water in the pan, we are doing whatever we can to ensure a moist bird. Why not brine? Brining the bird does work but I didn't want to make this an all-day project.

Roast in a 400 degree oven for 1 hour and 45 minutes. All ovens are different. Use a meat thermometer to check the temperature in the breast and thigh after 1 hour and 30 minutes. Ultimately we are looking for a temperature of slightly over 160 in the breast and not over 200 in the thigh.

160 is the magic number after which 99.9% of bacteria can't survive. I got 165 in the breast and 185 in the thigh.



Let the chicken rest for 20 minutes, tented with foil before carving.

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