I roasted my first chicken sometime in the spring of 2002. I was 22 and living on my own for the first time in my life. I bought the chicken at Reading Terminal Market, for the extravagant price of $13 (it seemed awfully spendy at the time since I was making approximately that much an hour). When I got it home, I rinsed it with cold water, patted it down with paper towels and perched it in a battered, shallow roasting pan that I had picked up at a thrift store. Following my mother's instructions, I sprinkled the outside with salt and garlic power. Inside, I slipped a halved lemon, a sprig of rosemary and a small, roughly chunked onion.
I've only very slightly improved on this method in the last six years. These days, I slip herbs under the skin, scatter whole cloves of garlic in the pan around the bird and rub the skin with a little butter in the final half hour in order to help crisp the skin. However, I always slip that halved lemon in the cavity. Over at the Kitchn, they've tested two roasted lemon chicken methods in an attempt to find a superior method. In one they perch lemon slices over the skin of the bird and in the other they put the lemon inside. Check out the post to see what they discovered.
What's your chicken roasting technique?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-26-2008 @ 11:44AM
David P said...
I used to rub down with melted butter, but that's a lot of calories and hassle.
Now I rub with Spanish olive oil, liberally salt, pepper and garlic powder it on the outside.
Liberally salt and it on the inside, and stuff it with lemon and unpelled garlic.
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2-26-2008 @ 12:18PM
Colin said...
Olive oil in a spray bottle to coat the outside. Lots of salt and pepper of course. And whatever I have in the fridge stuffed inside. Lemons, oranges, onions, fresh parsley... anything.
And in a pinch, we often just chuck them in the Crock Pot!
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2-26-2008 @ 3:13PM
Patrick said...
I still experiment a lot, so it's never quite the same. I'm often making the chicken to go with curries, so that affects the type of flavours I use. In those cases I often stuff the cavity with lime, onion, garlic, ginger, and a cinnmon stick, then rub the outside lightly with curry powder, and stick a few bits of butter under the skin.
Other times, I've stuffed simply with some lemon, onion, garlic and rosemary, and then put a few slices of bacon across the top of the chicken about halfway through cooking. That's the point where it starts drying out, and the bacon fat slowly cooks out into the chicken, helping to keep it moist.
A good brining before roasting also works wonders.
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2-27-2008 @ 3:28AM
matt said...
Very hot for a short time, hot for a longer time, then cool for a short time, until the thigh juices run clear. Depends on the mass of the chicken.
Also, $13 for a chicken is the minimum people should pay for a chicken (a, at one point in time, living and sentient being) as it costs about that much just to raise a chicken on pasture.
Think about it: considering you can get chicken for less than $2/lb at a supermarket, how much do you think the grower spent on the chicken itself over its lifetime? Would you be willing to spend just to keep your pet alive for a few months. More than a few dollars? If you only spent a few dollars, how happy would your pet be?
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