CHICKEN

Instead of chasing the impossible—a whole, bronzed, perfectly cooked bird—at Milk Street, we break down the chicken into manageable portions, add flavor fast with layers of spices and condiments and use liquid, not air, to cook it fast and keep it tender.

Americans spend some $95 billion a year on chicken—a lot of money for a protein that’s become a byword for bland. There’s plenty of great restaurant chicken—like the sauce-slicked, low-and-slow barbecued birds of Kansas City and the brick oven roasted chicken of San Francisco’s Zuni Café. But for home cooks it’s a different story. We marinate, grill, roast and go to extraordinary lengths in pursuit of crisply golden skin, only to end up with pink thighs, dry breasts and dull dinners.

Happily, the rest of the world has figured out it is possible to get better, easier results with bolder flavors. We just need to let go of the aspirational notion of the picture-perfect, golden brown, whole-roasted bird.

The challenge of cooking a whole bird is that breasts are done at 160°F while thighs need to reach 175°F to 180°F. One solution is to flatten birds to put the breasts and thighs on the same plane so they cook more evenly. In our chicken under a brick, we follow the lead of cooks in the country of Georgia and weigh the flattened chicken down to render sizzling, golden skin. Another option is to break the chicken down into parts for quicker cooking and easier seasoning. When we roast chicken parts on shallow sheet pans to speed up cooking and add vegetables alongside, as British cooks do with their traybakes, we get a one-pan solution to supper.

Skewers, with their flavorful, charred crusts, are popular around the world, from Nigerian beef suya to Singaporean satay. For our Turkish-inspired version, we make skewers with thin strips, not thick chunks, for faster and more flavorful cooking. We also change the shape of chicken intended for salad. In our Vietnamese chicken salad, we shred the cooked meat for faster, bolder seasoning.

We like to amplify flavor by layering ingredients. In our Thai-style fried chicken, seasonings used in the crust are repeated in a mixture used to dust the cooked pieces. Likewise, we layer flavors in our lemon-lime lacquered grilled chicken, using leftover marinade to make a basting and serving sauce. In our Iraqi spice-crusted grilled chicken we slide spices under the skin to better season the meat and help them stay put. For our skinless chicken cutlets, we use boldly seasoned breadcrumbs inspired by the Egyptian nut-and-spice blend dukkah for a crunchy, flavorful crust. And we balance rich, fried foods with bright, acidic counterpoints, serving a tangy carrot salad with the cutlets. Similarly, our Japanese-style cutlets are paired with a brightly acidic cabbage slaw.

Marinades often are disappointing. They add little flavor because they can’t penetrate deeply. And acidic marinades tend to leave meat tough and mushy. In our chicken escabeche, we avoid that and skip the marinade, saucing the chicken after it’s cooked.

When we do want to cook a bird whole, we use moist heat for more effective and gentler cooking. This helps solve the white meat-dark meat temperature differential. And we have no skin in this game. Rather than focus on ideal bronzing, we focus on the flavor of the meat and toss the skin before serving. For inspiration, we look to Hainan, in southern China, where chicken is poached silky smooth and paired with vibrant dipping sauces. In our chicken soup, inspired by Peruvian flavors, we focus on a few high-impact ingredients, using a whole bunch of fresh cilantro and spicy ají amarillo paste.

French cooks solve the whole-bird cooking challenge with chicken en cocotte. They cook chicken in a covered pot with a relatively small amount of liquid, creating richly concentrated juices. We came up with a few flavorful variations, including one rich with apricots, saffron and tarragon.