Wylie’s Roast Chicken

At home, I find that I’m often making chicken. Just classic, roasted chicken. And I love roasting whole chickens, but the way I have come to favour cooking chicken at home is to just do the thighs. Boneless, skin-on chicken thighs. Not the drum, just the thigh. Roasting a whole chicken takes a while and it is great because there are always leftovers. But if I’m cooking for my wife, I’ll just do the thighs.

The thigh is the best part of the chicken. It has the most flavour. Chicken breasts, I feel bad for. Even if it’s done right, and super juicy with crispy skin, the breast is never more than adequate. But a proper chicken thigh is delicious. THAT is ethereal to me!

For me it is simple – cast-iron pan on the stove, over a high heat, a little bit of clarified butter. Well, I should mention that when I’m cooking at home, I’m often doing my ‘shopping’ at my restaurant. So I can bring home clarified butter without any problem. But I digress…

Season the thighs with salt and white pepper. Then remove the pan from the flame and, away from the heat, just lay the thighs in the pan. But make sure to lay them down in a motion going away from yourself. Many people make the mistake of laying things in a hot pan of butter or oil coming towards their body. That is bad. The oil or butter can splash up and burn your arm. But now you’ve been warned.

Four thighs will feed two people and will all fit in a cast-iron pan.

At that point, you’ll want to turn down the heat immediately to just south of medium. And you want the cooking to take a little while because you want that skin to get a little crispy. Then you’ll want to add a little bit of garlic (1 or 2 cloves, unpeeled and smashed) and a handful of thyme.

You will know when the thighs are about 80–85 per cent done, as the skin is nice and golden brown and the colouring is starting to come up from the bottom around the edges, working its way to the top. At that point, you still don’t want to flip the thighs over. People often do that, but I think it dries the meat out. You just want to add a nice knob of butter to the pan with the aromatics. It will start to sizzle and pop. Then take the pan off the heat, tilt the pan ever so slightly and begin to baste the top of the thighs. Just pour that hot, flavoured butter over the chicken for a minute or two. It will begin to cook from the top.

THEN, turn all the thighs over, shut the heat off and count to ten. Immediately take them out and put on a plate to rest for 10 minutes, before checking they are cooked through.

Now it is time to talk about the garnish. There are a lot of different ways to go, but I love mashed potatoes with roast chicken. There’s nothing terribly fancy about it. I personally like a blend of starchy and waxy potatoes. So maybe 60 per cent Idaho and 40 per cent Yukon. But that’s pretty picky!

Peel your potatoes and get them more or less the same size. Put them in a pot of water and bring up the heat until the water starts to boil. Then right away bring the water down to a simmer. You don’t need to have the water at a full boil. If it boils, the potatoes will begin to swell and take on water. You want them to cook gently. You aren’t helping the process by cooking them at a higher temperature.

Once the potatoes are done (check with a fork! There’s no secret here!), drain them. After draining the potatoes, you are left with the big hot pot that they were just cooked in. So add a little butter and a little light cream into that pot. The heat of it will begin to melt the butter and warm the cream. Then I like to use a food mill or ricer over that pot to grate/mash the potatoes. Of course, you can also mash them the old-fashioned way. But again, be careful of the hot butter splashing up at you. It is a lesson you don’t need to learn the hard way.

Turn the heat on very low and at that point add some salt, and perhaps some additional butter or cream. You should really do it to your taste. Some people like their potatoes stiffer, others like them looser. But it is worth noting that, either way, potatoes always require more seasoning than you think they will. So keep checking and adding salt to taste. I like to add white pepper, just in small quantities.

I think it is nice to use simple greens to finish off the dish. Something like romaine hearts or endive (chicory), that are lightly dressed in a simple vinaigrette (a little mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil). I like the endive because it is bitter and I like the romaine because of its nice watery crunch. Both have a lot of texture, and even when I’m cooking at home I like to play with texture. The other great thing about using these kinds of leafy vegetables is that they are sturdy and hearty. And they complete the picture of the entire meal on a single plate. I personally prefer to have my salad on the same plate, rather than on a separate dish, so that all of the elements can talk to each other.

Stack the chicken up against the mound of potatoes, and then stick some of those greens in there to make the family picture just right.

Again, I do steal from my own restaurant. So as the last accent I will usually bring home some chicken jus. Certainly this is harder for most people cooking at home. But I will take a little of that jus, put it in a small pot and then add the juices that came off from cooking the chicken and heat the whole thing up to make a very flavourful addition. It won’t be that very clean jus that you look for in a restaurant. It has more of that rustic vibe.

And like a little kid, I like to make a volcano out of my potatoes and put some sauce in there.

For dessert, my wife makes home-made ice cream sandwiches. She uses store-bought chocolate wafers and a variety of ice creams. It’s delicious!

Wylie’s Roast Chicken