THE ICON:
ROASTED CHICKEN
THERE SHOULD BE LITTLE DOUBT WHAT RECIPE I WOULD choose to launch a book called How to Roast. The roasted chicken is an iconic dish, the preparation most often named by chefs as their favorite meal, I’d wager. It’s a dish that says home cooking more than any other, a dish that is accessible to all, a dish that is so revered and appreciated it is often reserved for the special Sunday meal, but one that is so easy it can be a regular weeknight dinner. It’s ultimately nothing more than a heat-and-serve item. Put it in a pan and put it in the oven. Return in an hour, et voilà! A perfectly roasted chicken every time.
I made waves in the foodie world a while back, much to my photographer’s embarrassment, when I suggested that couples should couple whilst the bird cooks. I had thrown this idea out there rather impetuously, in a blog post (a form of opinion writing that is by nature impetuous), under the headline “America: Too Stupid to Cook.” I’ve long been frustrated by the onslaught of recipes and books promising fast and easy meals, and by the advertisements from companies producing precooked meals packed in plastic, which imply through their focus on fast and easy that cooking real food is slow and difficult. It’s no wonder that the processed food purveyors want you to think that cooking is hard and that if you just buy a can of chicken broth or a boxed cake mix your miserable life will suddenly be clover and rainbows.
The Wednesday food sections and the television shows recycle this harmful notion that cooking is hard, bombarding us with “Here’s how we’re going to help you pull a fast one on the evil drudgery of cooking your own food.” The worst part is that they should, and do, know better. So I posted my diatribe under a photo of the classic home-cooked meal, a roasted chicken. We roast a chicken in our house most weeks, and Donna had been moved to photograph one recently when I’d pulled the bird, juices crackling in the cast-iron pan, from the oven, so inviting it was to her, so delicious-looking.
In a bit of a satire, I followed up my diatribe with “The World’s Most Difficult Roasted Chicken Recipe.” Ostensibly concerned that my too-stupid-to-cook readers were also too unimaginative to figure out what to do with this big free hour they had while the bird was in the oven, I offered suggestions. I also suggested this publicly at an IACP conference—to much tittering, I discovered later when I watched the clip on YouTube. And then an editor at The New Yorker, who was compiling a book of essays and recipes from men who cook, asked me to explore this idea, as there was indeed growing evidence of the social benefits of cooking at home. Slate picked up the essay and soon the question “Do you want to roast a chicken?” became a secret handshake-cum-pickup-line in certain foodie circles and a way to flirt on Twitter without the non-foodie spouse’s catching on. Or so I like to think.
The point, though, was not to encourage roasting a chicken as an excuse for having sex. The point was that cooking is so easy you can have sex in the middle of a recipe. Yes, time has to pass while the food cooks, but you don’t have to stare at the oven all the while. Most importantly, I wanted to proclaim that cooking isn’t a hobby you do on the side, but rather an act that might be happily integrated into the fabric of your day.
The icon of home cooking is to me a roasted chicken, a dish that is at the same time both a supremely special preparation and a quintessentially humble one. I shake my head when people ask me for my roasted chicken recipe. The “recipe” is so easy I have to struggle for ideas to make it harder. Somehow, “Put well-salted bird into hot oven for 1 hour; let rest 15 minutes” doesn’t really satisfy, though it did take on a life of its own when it involved two people.
All of which is to say that the roasted chicken is many things, both actual and symbolic, and also an emblem of the technique, of what roasting is all about—the high, dry heat and the deep, rich flavors and heady aromas that result.
How to Roast a Chicken
There are, of course, many ways to roast a chicken. High heat or low heat, covered or uncovered, on a bed of aromatic vegetables or unadorned. The weirdest roasted chicken technique I read was one by the Michelin-starred British modernist chef Heston Blumenthal, who roasts the bird at 200°F/95°C—that’s below boiling! It all depends on what you’re after, and me, I’m after a bird with a juicy breast, hot and tender thighs (is there any wonder Eros is never far from a roasted chicken?), succulent wings, and crisp, salty, golden-brown skin. It also fills the home with delicious aromas, which soothes stress and helps us feel relaxed.
1 (4-pound/1.8-kilogram) chicken, trussed
Kosher salt
SERVES 4
- PREHEAT the oven to 450°F/230°C (or 425°F/220°C if you have convection); if your oven hasn’t been cleaned recently or your kitchen has bad ventilation, use 425°F/220°C.
- RINSE the bird under cold water and let the water drain off. RAIN salt down onto the bird, covering it completely.
- PUT the bird, breast side up, in an ovenproof skillet or other low-sided pan and ROAST it for 1 hour.
- REMOVE the bird to a cutting board and LET it sit there for 15 to 20 minutes, and then CARVE and SERVE.
Step 1. Put a 3-foot/1-meter length of butcher’s string under the chicken.
Step 2. Cross the string (as if tying a square knot) and pull it taut.
Step 3. This helps ensure a plumped-up breast.
Step 4. Cross the string under the ends of the drumsticks.
Step 5. Loop the string over the drumsticks, then pull tightly so that they overlap.
Step 6. Pull the string around either side of the chicken above the neck.
Step 7: Secure the string behind the neck of the bird using a triple loop or slipknot.
Step 8. Cut off excess string (notice the wing tips are folded under the bird).
THE FINER POINTS
WEIGHT
I’ve learned from experience that a bird of this weight, the weight most commonly available in grocery stores, cooks perfectly in 1 hour. If you’re roasting a smaller bird, you can reduce the time to 45 or 50 minutes. If you’re not sure whether the bird is done, tilt it so that the juices collecting in its cavity spill out into the pan; if the juices are not pink, remove the bird from the oven; if they’re still bloody, check again in 5 minutes. A large bird (one weighing 5 pounds/2.25 kilograms) would be a good candidate for the poêlé technique (see here).
TRUSSING
A trussed bird (see facing page) looks much lovelier than one untrussed, but the main benefit of trussing a bird is that it cooks more uniformly, preventing the breast from overcooking and drying out. When you truss a bird, you reduce the amount of air circulating in the cavity, which is what overcooks the breast. You can stuff an onion or lemon in the cavity to reduce circulation in lieu of trussing, but these very moist items release a lot of steamy moisture, which may affect the crispiness of the skin. They do have a lovely aromatic effect on the pan juices and fat, though. All of these issues are personal matters for each cook to decide.
SALT
Salting the bird properly is fundamental to its excellence. You want a light but definitive and uniform coating of salt. Some cooks and chefs prefer to salt the bird up to a day ahead and let it sit on a rack in the refrigerator. This dehydrates the skin so that it becomes especially crisp; the salt also begins to penetrate and season the meat. I prefer to salt the bird just before roasting so that it doesn’t dissolve and instead gives the skin a coarse texture. Brining the chicken will result in a nicely seasoned bird with a smooth and shiny brown skin—also fine if that’s what you prefer. Another recommended flavoring technique is to smear butter and chopped fresh herbs beneath the skin on the breast.