Anyone can throw a chicken in the oven and roast it, but not everyone will end up with a bird worth eating. Somewhere between the advent of the microwave and the invention of Tyson chicken fingers the art of making a good roast chicken has been lost. We here at ONK believe that roasting a chicken should be more than just throwing a chicken in your oven. Roast chicken should never be referred to as just chicken.
Brining vs Basting:
The primary concern when roasting a chicken is keeping the meat moist. There tend to be two schools of thought on how to keep a bird moist; either basting the meat in it’s own juices or brining it in a salt water. In our opinion there should only be one school of thought and I’m going to tell you why. You should never baste. Basting will extend your cooking time, wash off any spices and flavors, prevent the skin from caramelizing and most importantly it can contaminate your meat. And let’s face it, basting is time consuming. Brining will reduce your cooking time, give you a better tasting meat and most importantly keep your meat moist without risk of contamination. Brines can be as complex or as simple as you would like. I like to use a simple brine for a roast chicken, but really you can add any herb or spice you want.
Brine:
- 2 cups salt
- 1 cup Turbinado sugar
- 1 Tbsp dried Thyme
- 1 Tbsp allspice berries
- 2 Tbsp fresh ground pepper
- 1 gallon of water
Dissolve salt and sugar in water (you may need to heat your water if you do let it cool before you add the chicken). Add spices. Immerse the chicken and allow it to sit for 4-12 hours. Simple right?
After your chicken is brined pull it out of the water and dry it off. Separate the skin from the breast and the legs. Rub the breasts and legs (under the skin) with some melted butter and a good spice rub (Good ones can be found here or here. A note on Urban Herbs: they carry a great roast chicken rub, but you will have to call about it. They do ship, and it’s worth the wait. We use a lot of their rubs and spice mixes here at ONK). I usually also rub the skin with some rub mainly because I want to have those great flavors in the chicken broth I’ll make from the carcass.
Stuff the cavity with a half of an onion, 1 small apple, and 3 cloves of garlic. These will infuse the meat with flavor while helping keep the meat moist. Never, and we mean NEVER, stuff a chicken with stuffing. Doing so will only dry out your meat. If you want stuffing to accompany the chicken, make it in a casserole dish but do not punish your poor chicken by shoving bread up its… you get the point.
Put the chicken on a rack in a roasting pan. Roast at 400 degrees until the internal temperature of the meat is 165 degrees. Let the chicken rest a couple minutes out of the oven before carving. If the roasting was successful, the bird should come apart rather easily when carved.
