Perfect Roast Chicken
May 11 '03 (Updated Feb 20 '08)
The Bottom Line When roast chicken is perfectly cooked at home and eaten with family or close friends, even the finest restaurant in the world cannot provide you with a better meal.
How to Roast a Chicken
In honor of Sunday, I present to you a rambling little discourse on how to prepare one of my favorite meals and what to do with the leftovers. Roast chicken is a dish beloved by nearly everyone and quite easy to prepare as well. What follows here is an admittedly lengthy methodology, but you shouldn't let that put you off because the actual work involved is very light and easy.
What to buy
Obviously, one needs to start with a chicken. I prefer very fresh chickens and as I live in Belgium, where outdoor markets take place in different towns close to where I live several times a week, they are not difficult for me to find. I like to buy a plump looking bird, about 3.5 lbs./1.75kg but I don’t much bother about the weight. However much meat there is on the bird will get used up in my house, and if you follow my suggestions, the same will happen in your home.
You will also need an apple, two small carrots, a few stalks of celery, an onion or a few shallots and a lump of butter. (Let your lump of butter sit out at room temperature to soften.) Fresh herbs are nice if you have them, but not necessary. If you enjoy a sauce or gravy with your chicken, you will need a glass of wine (preferably white), and two tablespoons of flour if you want a proper gravy. For "deluxe" gravy I will sometimes purchase a few extra giblets as well. Salt and pepper will suffice as seasonings.
Preparing the Chicken
When you're ready to start preparing the chicken, arrange an oven rack about one third up from the bottom, so that the chicken will sit in the middle third of the oven. Preheat your oven to 425F/220C. Look inside the cavity of the chicken. If there are giblets, remove them. These can go in the pan with the chicken to enrich the sauce or gravy. Pull off the lumps of fat that attach to the skin of the chicken just near the opening. You may either discard these or add them to the pan to provide a bit more richness to your gravy.
I don't rinse my chicken as I'm of the belief that it only spreads any contamination – to the sink and other parts of the chicken. Proper cooking will kill any unwanted bacteria, so I omit this popular step.
For a cooking pan, I like to use a heavy cast iron skillet. But any fairly shallow, heavy metal pan will do so long as it holds the chicken comfortably without too much extra space around the bird. You do not need to oil the pan.
Take the carrots and peel them. Then chop them roughly into pieces about 1/2"/1cm thick. Wash the celery stalks and do the same with them. Next, peel the onion or shallots and dice it into pieces of similar size. Collectively, these vegetables are known in the French culinary jargon as mire poix. Place the vegetables all together in your cooking pan in a single layer, with a slight concentration near the center, where you will place the chicken. Add a bit of salt and pepper to the pan, and the giblets and fat if you like. Also a bit of fresh herb if you like. Rosemary, sage and thyme complement chicken very well.
If you are using any fresh herb you can loosen the skin of the chicken by working your fingers underneath it. Add some herbs between the skin and the meat. This imparts a lovely flavor.
Next, wash your apple and quarter it. You don’t need to peel or trim it – you won’t be serving the quarters. Stuff the quarters into the cavity of the chicken with a few sprigs of herb, if you like. The apple will provide extra moisture to prevent the bird from drying out. If all four quarters won’t fit, don’t force it; just have yourself a little pre-dinner snack. Then take the softened lump of butter and rub it on the skin of the chicken all over. Julia Child calls this giving the chicken a "massage" and she claims that the bird enjoys it! Finally, sprinkle the bird with salt and pepper and place it breast side up on the cooking tray, sitting on top of the chopped vegetables.
Cooking the Chicken
Pop the pan or cooking tray in the oven, which ought to be up to temperature by now. When you close the oven door, reduce the setting to 400F/205C.
Many people will tell you that different kinds of meat take so many minutes per pound to cook to a such and such doneness at a given temperature. Culinary scientists however, have found that there are no hard and fast rules about these things. My solution is to work with a meat thermometer, which is the only absolute way of gauging how done the bird is.
After 55 minutes in the oven, I take out the pan and push the thermometer into the thickest part of the breast until it is almost, but not quite, touching the bone beneath the breast. Chicken should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160F/71C, but ideally no higher than that. If the chicken is not done at this point, baste it with the juices from the pan, put it back into the oven quickly (careful not to let all the heat escape) and check it every 10-15 minutes thereafter. When it has reached the proper temperature, take it out of the oven, placing the pan on top of your stove. Remove the chicken to a platter or a large plate and cover it loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil. Give it a chance to rest while you prepare the sauce or gravy.
Preparing the Au Jus or Gravy
I always prefer au jus sauce with my chicken, which is made simply by thickening the natural juices of the chicken and vegetables from the pan with a little white wine added in. To prepare au jus, start by scraping the vegetables in the pan. If any of them are sticking to the pan, loosen them with just a bit of the white wine. Collect all the vegetables and giblets if there are any and scoop them into a bowl, letting any liquid remain in the pan. Pour the glass of wine into the bowl and stir it around so that it collects the flavors of the vegetables and turns brown. Then pour just this brown liquid back into the cooking pan, pressing on the solids to release all the juices. Stir this around the pan, loosening any little brown bits still clinging to the pan. Turn on the burner under the pan to a medium setting and allow the alcohol to evaporate and the juices to thicken. At this point check the cooked chicken and see if any juices have accumulated around it or inside the cavity. If so, add these to the pan now. In a few minutes the sauce is done and the chicken is ready to serve.
If you prefer a real gravy with your chicken, that will take a bit more work. Remove the giblets and mire poix and add the wine to the bowl as for the au jus. Before you add the liquid back to the pan, you must sprinkle the flour over the fat and juices remaining in the pan and cook the flour thoroughly. Turn the burner to medium-low heat and stir the floury lumps that will form in the pan. Cook these for at least 4 minutes. Then slowly add the liquid to the pan in a thin stream, whisking vigorously with a fork or whisk as you do so. Some people like to mince the giblets and add them to the gravy.
Eating and the Leftovers
Now you get to eat your chicken piping hot. Carve up the breast and legs and don't forget to turn the bird over and dig out the oysters – the most succulent morsels on the bird. Mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli are our favorite vegetables to accompany a roast chicken, and both are very easy to prepare while the chicken cooks. When you have finished your meal, there may be a good deal of meat left or there may just be the carcass. If any meat is left, it’s best to remove it from the bone now. Place it in a bag or container for another meal. Also save the bones to prepare some broth. But take care to retrieve the apple quarters and discard them. If you prepare broth with the apples still in the cavity of the bird, the pectin from the apples will make your broth very gelatinous.
The leftover meat has many possible uses. It can be eaten cold in sandwiches, added to almost any soup or diced up and made into a chicken salad with the addition of mayonnaise and some chopped celery and parsley. This of course, is the traditional chicken salad, but I've found that I like a chicken salad made with fennel or shredded carrot too. I generally add whatever suitably crunchy vegetable I happen to have on hand, even broccoli. With a little salt, pepper and mayonnaise, the chicken salad always disappears quickly.
The day after we have a roast chicken dinner, I prepare broth in the simplest way possible. I put the bones in a four quart pot, add two stems of parsley, either fresh or frozen (I save parsley stems and keep them in a plastic bag in the freezer for just such occasions) and cover the bones with cold water up to an inch from the top of the pot. I bring the pot to a rapid simmer and then reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting. I let the broth simmer uncovered for at least three hours. Some people skim the scum that rises to the top of the pot, but unless I'm planning to use the broth in a soup for company, I don't bother. The lazy method works just fine for me. After a few hours of simmering, strain the liquid and refrigerate or freeze it. Discard the bones and skin. Use the broth for a wonderful homemade soup, perhaps even a chicken soup with the left over meat.
If you have any leftover au jus, here is a wonderful way to use it up. Prepare a salad of fresh lettuce or other greens. Heat the au jus in the microwave and then drizzle a few hot spoonfuls over each serving of salad. It makes an incredibly flavorful salad dressing!
By following these methods, I usually get about six servings out of the chicken: two hot meals for my husband and myself and then about four servings from the leftovers, not including the broth or the au jus. So you can see that a roast chicken is a very economical dish in terms of both labor and money.
I hope you enjoy these suggestions and I'd love to hear your comments or alternative methods.
More of my favorite recipes can be found here:
• Fregolota - a "crumbly," not-too-sweet dessert from the Veneto
• Umbrian Lentils - Not quite a soup, simply divine
• Qatayef - Arab pancakes, a specialty dessert for Ramadan
Some of my favorite kitchen tools:
• Oxo Good Grips Kitchen Tongs - sturdy and safe to use with non-stick pans
• Oxo Good Grips Offset Bread Knife - does its job well and safely
• Swing Away Can Opener - the one I kept after trying all the others
• Taylor Instant Read Pocket Thermometer - essential tool for cooking roasts of any kind
• KitchenAid Standing Mixer - indispensable for certain kitchen tasks, and incredibly strong
• KitchenAid Santoku knife - a nice intersection of a chef's knife and a utility knife
• Cuisinart Mini-Mate Food Processor - grind those spices or make pesto in a trice
• Endurance Precision Pierced Colander - drains like a dream, and made of stainless steel
• Black & Decker Rice & Vegetable Steamer - takes a licking, keeps on ticking
• Lodge Cast Iron Dutch Oven - ideal for stews and no knead bread
• Bron Mandoline Slicer - the Cadillac of the kitchen
• Magnabar Knife Holder - extra storage space for my best kitchen tools
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