We broke our last oven using the “self-cleaning” feature.
It’s literally the oven burning itself in order to clean the gunk we humans left behind.
Sort of like chemo for ovens. If the chemo (or self-cleaning) doesn’t break it, the dirt and grime inside will.
This recipe is so darn good. And not technically challenging. My first attempt at it was a big success. Early in our marriage before children we used to cook whole chickens all the time. Then we continued and tried several recipes. While chicken was a staple in our household.
Now we seldom eat chicken after our older son took on a pescatarian diet.
Another favorite is spatchcocked and coated in a mostly cumin rub.
Cast iron skillet, bed of potatoes, a halved or quartered onion to set the chicken on. Salt and pepper, halved lemon inside if I have it. Truss if I feel like it. Start with breast side down, then flip and finish. Temp 375-ish.
I still wet brine my birds. I did try dry salting for the most recent turkey (Thanksgiving) and found I didn’t do a good job as it relates to evenness, and some parts were much more salty than others.
My wet brine has roughly 6% salt by weight and about the same amount of brown sugar (if not more). Part of the liquid is a “tea” made by boiling rosemary, thyme, cracked up allspice berries and black peppercorns, minced garlic and finely chopped onion. Once the tea cools I strain it and use with additional water as part of my salt/sugar solvent. I usually put additional slivers of garlic in when the chicken goes into the brine because boiling garlic doesn’t seem to pull as much flavor as I’d like. Note most of the flavors from the tea barely go skin deep. But they’re there and I love `em - but for a lot of folks it might just be wasted time/thyme.
Generally I try to wet brine several days in advance then off-brine, let it sit open in the extra fridge a day or so to get the skin to dry out.
My favorite (and family’s favorite) 3 ways, in no particular order, are:
— spatchcock and roast on the grill, indirect heat, plus a little sweet smoke now and then (pear if I’ve got it, apple if I don’t);
— rotisserie, ditto the comment about smoke; and
— stovetop sear then slow oven (250°F) tightly covered for about 90-120 minutes, something Cook’s Country called “French Chicken In A Pot” (Link points to a Food(dot)com reprint that seems legit based on my notes. But no idea if anyone in France actually does it this way). If you try this recipe, my recommendation is to ignore the instruction to toss out all the veggies when straining/defatting the liquid. I pull the bay leaves and rosemary, then put the veggies back into the juice and blitz for a thick and rich sauce (sometimes using a thickener, but not always). And I start with a brined bird rather than salting as instructed.
Honorable mention to 40 Cloves type recipes, except I usually use a whole cut up bird rather than just thighs, as many call for.
While there is some truth to this, immersing in a wet brine or tea means the inside of the bird also gets the consistent-coverage treatment. This is not generally the case with “dry brining”.
You mention rotisserie… Do you have a side burner rig? My two setups are both bottom burners, and I really want to convert them to delivering the heat from the side(s), to collect the drippings and/or baste in a lechefrite. I once built an expanded metal basket in which to build a vertical woodfire, but never made the spitjacks to set in front of it. Maybe some day…
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Ive been using the Turned Roasted Chicken “recipe” (less recipe thab technique)from Joy of Cooking forever.
Dry the skin, season, roast the bird on its side in a v shaped rack for 20 min plus 3 min per pound over 3 pounds (so 5 pound bird is 26 min) (325 F)
Take the bird out and flip it to its other side. Exact same time.
Take the bird out and put it breast side up for 20 min or til golden and comes to temp.
Aleays evenly golden and always moist breast meat with crispy skin. Im sure a dry brine would be even better
I’m all about the golden skin, and today is the day! Since I’m already cooking most of the day for a meal train, I’m bound to pick one of the lesser involved methods here.
How do you keep the bird on its side, i.e. does it not topple over? Also, just 325 the whole time?
TIA!
Roast chicken is one of my favorite things to eat. It’s my answer whenever anyone asks "if you had to eat one thing for the rest of your life . … " (dumb question but…)
Saying that - I’m extremely impressed with how much time you all spend roasting a chicken. At first, i though I misread the post title and thought you all must be talking about roasting turkeys!!!
My “go-tos” (and I have a lot since I do love roast chicken)
Buy a good bird! I can now get locally raised chickens. When I couldn’t I preferred kosher (pre-brined essentially). For major brands I do prefer Bell-Evans.
Salt/Pepper/Herbs UNDER the skin (sometimes butter but not always). Maybe I will let it rest in the fridge for an hour or two but not always (I can’t think 3 days ahead for roast chicken). Teasing the skin away helps the fat render and the skin crisp IMHO.
Beer Can Chicken on Grill - love this, super easy clean-up. Just have to make sure the burner right under the chicken (or coals) are very low or off. I’ve had more than one “cremated” chicken in my time.
Roasted in hot oven (400), in a skillet instead of a roasting pan. Lower sides, crispier skin IMHO
Spatchcocked - skin side down in hot skillet for 10-15 minutes to start things off and then flip and into 400 oven, usually slide some partially roasted potatoes or other vegs underneath before I put it in the oven. (I find raw potatoes, even fingerlings, don’t cook as fully as I’d like tucked under a spatchcocked bird)
I haven’t noticed how much time folks spend, but remember a major “Aha!” moment when practicing the “Judy Bird”, how the technique stressed a smallish bird, and how difficult they can sometimes be to find.
Do you prefer any particular size?
Also, in the Zuni cookbook, another “Aha!” was the idea of salting when you bring food home. Of course, that doesn’t always make sense for me, but sometimes it does !
Spatchcocked, lots of herbs. High heat. Crispy and juicy, but I don’t like the oven splatter. And self-cleaning makes me nervous. Only have done it once on my current stove - because I stupidly spatchcocked and roasted a capon - it was a Vesuvius of fat. This is a plain chicken:
That is a gorgeous bird! 
Believe me, I set upon it like a ravenous beast! Or cat …
If I’m ever imprisoned and on Death Row (because I’m SUCH a troublemaker! 
), a truly perfect roasted chicken (like @Meekah’s below!), ultra-creamy mashed potatoes, and peas will be my Last Meal.
Pepin’s method that I use:
Use a cast iron skillet with some oil. Heat skillet to very hot on stove while heating oven to 400. Oil the chicken’s skin. Chicken in skillet on its back 3 min, on left side 2 min, on right side 2 min. Then into the oven, 20 minutes on right side , 20 min on its left side, ten min on its back (breast side up) then rest 10 minutes while making pan sauce. Easy to position the bird using the side of the skillet if needed.
Flame if you must but every time I shop at Costco I pick up a rotisserie. It’s just the salt level I like, generous amount of meat, and provides bones for stock. For $6 I don’t know how you top that. Skin isn’t crispy but I keep it and render it later for chicken rice. That’s generally all the roast chicken I need.
For the annual turkey I dry brine for at least 3 days to dry out the skin and then roast high-med.
We used to get the Wegmans roti chicken many years ago, but - while flavorful - something about it always upset my stomach. They’re also a whopping $14.99 (maybe bc they’re organic?), and unless you get them when they come out straight from the grill (I’ve been lucky lately for one of my clients 
) I find that they turn kinda leathery, and I haven’t been impressed with their size.
Sam’s Club’s roti chicken OTOH are almost freakishly large in a way that I almost don’t want to buy them, despite or maybe bc they’re only $4.99. They look right, but… I can’t get myself to try them 
I also never get the crispy skin I desire nay require with store-bought roti chicken. 
I’ve not had luck with grocery rotisserie. They’re always dried out from the heat lamps. Costco is a unnaturaly large but moist.
Yeah, I like the flavor of my local market’s rotisserie chix, and they’re almost always moist, but the skin will never be crispy sitting in a bag on a warming tray. But convenient to pick up if you’ve got nothing planned for dinner that night, and it’ll give you a couple of meals.
