I read an interview with Michael Pollen a few years ago when 'Food Rules' came out, his pocket-sized guide for healthy eating. He said that frequently doctors would ask him to write a list of easy-to-follow guidelines or rules for changing one's diet and reducing risk factors for healthy longevity. It's where his succinct driving mantra, "Eat food. Not too much, mostly plants" came from.
He also talked about hearing from doctors who, when talking to a patient whose elevated levels of cholesterol made them candidates for cholesterol medication, would, instead of writing a prescription, give them a recipe for making roast chicken along with 4 or 5 other meals that you could make with the subsequent leftovers.
I know how easy it is to get into a food rut. Of having a rotation of the same 10 ingredients or meals, especially 3 months into a 4 month season (there's something about changing seasons that gets me obsessively back into cooking). However, there will never be a time when I get sick of pulling out a perfectly juicy roast chicken from the oven. And, I'd argue, if you serve seasonal vegetables as a side, a roast chicken dinner can be as nutritious as it is comforting. Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home, a comprehensive 'how to' cookbook provides a recipe for roast chicken and 3 or 4 pages of how to change its flavor profile and serve sides for all 4 seasons. Perfect.
Knowing how to roast a chicken to consistent perfection will change your life. I'm not kidding!
I'd say there are weeks where 3 out of every 10 meals we have contain some part of a roast chicken. I've been known to roast 2 or 3 in a weekend in order to break down, shred and freeze for later meals. If i had to guess, I've probably roasted 30 just this year. The bones destined for stock, one chicken can feed the two of us for 5-6 meals, all told. And since 4-5 pound bird can run you as little as $3.00 if you catch it at a good price and have the luxury of a freezer to store a few extra, this is good on all sorts of levels.
First, some tips, then the recipe:
* There are about 350,000 different recipes on roasting chicken. My method ('recipe' seems a bit of a stretch) is a combination of two of my favorite recipes (different sources, both derived from everyday French techniques). The result will be juicy like a rotisserie chicken. I'll be hopefully posting more recipes for different kinds of chicken (very crispy skin, glazed, etc), but this is a workhorse kind of technique that requires very little fuss, making it a go-to for both a lazy Sunday or a just-got-home-haven't-taken-shoes-off-yet kind of frenzied Thursday night dinner.
* I always buy chickens that weigh around 4 1/2 lbs. This is a perfect size for 4 people and (to my eye) is a little bigger than a typical rotisserie chicken you pick up at the store.
The singular reason for the consistency is to make you a better cook, and to minimize time calculations at the end of a busy day. If I only ever cook chicken that weighs 4 1/2 lbs, then through experience I can tell down to the minute when the chicken will be perfectly done. This also helps improve cooking skills in general, since you can teach your other senses how to tell when a chicken is ready to pull out of the oven instead of just relying on the internal temperature.* Pull your chicken out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature for an hour before cooking. After an hour or whenever I work my way back into the kitchen, I take out the neck and organs that they usually throw in there, pat dry with paper towels, then let it sit, surrounded by more paper towels, in a bowl in the sink for another 10 or 15 minutes. This is about half of the total energy that you will expend making the chicken.
* A good rule of thumb is to season the chicken, then turn on the oven. The amount of time it takes the oven to heat up is about equal to the time your chicken should spend with seasoning before cooking.
* If you're using rosemary, put it in after you flip the bird (or after 45 minutes if you're using a different method than below). Rosemary tends to taste medicinal after 45 minutes or an hour and that 'denatured woodsy' note is really overpowering.
* Always always always temp the chicken. Maybe I'm just paranoid or I'm scared of being too cavalier so as to invite tragedy (if movies have taught me anything it is that being boastful will immediately result in a gypsy curse that threatens to take away that which i hold most dear), but you'll truly never learn how to cook food properly if you don't take the temperature of your protein every single time you take it out of the oven to check for doneness. * Let rest for 20 mins, and, if possible, tilt it breast side down with the neck slightly elevated on an overturned bowl or something. This helps encourage the juices from the breast to redistribute therein, rather than pooling under the thighs.
Roast Chicken (Poulet en Concôte method)
1) Remove the chicken from the fridge and let sit out at room temperature for about an hour. If you're short on time or are grossed out about food spending time in the 'danger zone' of temperature, run a very small stream of cold tap water over the chicken for 20 minutes or so and continue to step 2.
2) With the cavity (rear end) pointing down, sit the bird upright in a bowl set in the sink. This will allow the blood to drain while you rinse and trim.
To trim, check the cavity to see if there are organs or neck pieces. Throw out the organs but save the neck (trimming away the skin) for either stock or start a freezer bag of necks for braising (I'm hoping to do a post in praise of turkey/chicken necks in the coming weeks). I cut out the tailbone with a paring or steak knife so the bottom looks like this:
It's not completely necessary to cut it out, but it's like 99% fat and you never really eat it anyway, so...
While you're down there, take a paring knife to any extra pieces of skin that they usually leave on around the cavity area. Most of the ones I get have these huge flaps of skin that they tuck into the cavity that are easily removable. Rinse and sit upright onto paper towels to soak up water and blood. Put paper towels on top as well and let sit for a few minutes while you wash your hands and put 4 tablespoons of salt and maybe 2 tablespoons of pepper in a small bowl. Finally, flip the wing tips behind the breast to keep them from sticking out. It makes him look like he's sunbathing, so, you know, pretty cute.
3) Add salt and pepper mixture all over the chicken, being very liberal. It is actually kind of shocking how much salt it takes. You should have just a little bit left over that you can reserve for the vegetables. Turn the oven to 350 degrees and let sit until the oven beeps.
Cooking
Pat the chicken completely dry and add, breast side down, to the pot when the oil starts shimmering and just begins to smoke. Let cook, undisturbed, for 3-4 minutes and then flip and cook for 3-4 minutes. The chicken should be golden brown and crispy. add a half lemon and a bunch of thyme sprigs to the cavity. Cover with the lid and put in oven for 45 minutes.
6) After 45 minutes, take the chicken out of the pot with tongs and let rest on a plate. Take the temperature of the thickest part of the thigh. If it's somewhere in the 140s, you're about 30-40 minutes away from being done. Add the mixed vegetables to the bottom of the pot (there should be some chicken fat and juices that have rendered already). Flip the chicken and let sit on top of the vegetables breast-side down. Cook for another 20 minutes, then start temping every 5-10 until the breast registers 165 and the thigh measures 175.
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