Rocket Hot Ovens, Roast Chicken and Why I Brine (Part II)

Now, as I was saying...

With that in mind, a number of months ago, I started looking into recipes and techniques for roasting chicken. As usual, I (virtually) consulted my favorites: Alton Brown, Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, the Frugal Gourmet, and the America’s Test Kitchen folks. Then I came upon the writings of Barbara Kafka, who apparently was the ‘Roasting Guru’ of the Nineties, and revolutionized the home-roasting game with her high-temperature technique. It also snagged her a Julia Child Cookbook Award.

How high? I mean high, as in the absolute temperature your oven can reach: 500 degrees. As Alton Brown says, rocket hot. So hot it will burn anything left in your unclean oven (yes it is, trust me), causing the entire kitchen (and/or apartment) to fill with smoke, have you opening up the windows, cranking up the AC and fan, and running around in panic, since you set off the smoke detector (again), and it’s ridiculously loud and obnoxious sounding, making your skull vibrate with every shriek. It’ll make you wonder if it’s all worth it, and if you’re gonna get a blackened brick of poultry in return when it’s all done.

However, the benefits (not including a delicious chicken) will quickly make you change your viewpoint. Once you plug in the thermometer and put the chicken in the oven, that’s it. You just walk away. No basting, no cooking rack, no trussing, no butter under the skin (though I like to give it a rubdown over-the-shirt).

Just leave it alone until the thermometer beeps at 160. And it comes out all golden, with yummy, crackly skin, with (pre-gravy) drippings that Scarface could’ve sold as a sidecar to his usual in the 80s. In fact, I would go as far as saying that the cooking process, post-prep, is kinda boring… aside from all the smoky excitement as described before.

And so we begin; Let's light this candle!

Oven: crank it up all the way -- it's gonna take awhile to get to critical mass. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees – usually as far as the dial will go. Now's the time when one of your two (you do have two right? an innie and and outie?) thermometers will come into play. The oven's gotta be at 500 degrees, or damn close, and I mean the oven, not just the air in the oven. So put the pedal to the metal, and give her time to get up to ramming speed.

It’s very important to allow enough time for this, as you want to make sure the oven gets to this level, and will hold it there. I usually give it about an hour to get to launch speed, which will leave plenty of time to prep the chicken and go back to whatever else you'd like to be doing, like playing with your Nofriendo Wii or reading snarky blogs. You'll have like 59 minutes. Seriously, it's that wonderfully simple. Now's the time to get your culinary legos together as well:

• 4 to 6 pound whole chicken
• 1/2 cup of thyme
• 1/2 cup of rosemary
• 1 lemon, juice reserved
• 2 tbls (unsalted) butter
• 1 cup white wine
• Past-their-prime celery and/or carrots
• Kosher (or sea, not table) Salt n' (fresh ground) Pepper
• What else you got around the house that might work? Any veggies past-their-prime will serve as a great napping mat for the chicken and future gravy base with the celery and carrots. Smashed garlic cloves? Definitely. Mushrooms? Sure. Chunks of onion? Check. Or none of these. Garlic is nice though.
  

adapted from Barbara Kafka's Roasting: A Simple Art

For the brine:

• Approximately 1/2 cup kosher salt
• Handful of peppercorns (smash 'em a bit if you like)

adapted by my scientific trial-and-error method

What else do you have around? A few of the savory bits will be plenty. How about a bit of thyme? A bay leaf or two? Tune to taste -- just make sure the solution is salty. Like hella salty.

Anyway, grab a stockpot that will hold the submerged chicken, and fill it about 1/4 way with cold water. Bring it to a simmer, and dissolve the salt, peppercorns and whatever else you got. I also like to drop a few smashed garlic cloves in the mix. Once the salt is dissolved, take the pot off the stove, and allow it to cool. It will be disgustingly salty, but that's okay. We're going to dilute it. Drop as many ice cubes as you can, while maintaining a decent salinity to taste. Get about as many in as you think will cool the brine as well as melt and submerge the chicken when we put it in. Now, it's very important that we need to get this thing ice cold, else we fall victim to icky bacteria. This is NOT an option. Has this happened yet? No?

Stop right there then. Get it very very cold, and then come back.

Okay, we're there? Excellent. Now, place the chicken into the stockpot, make sure it sinks, and add some ice to the top to keep it cold for awhile. Periodically, return to check the bird and add more ice. Yeah, I know it's reducing the salinity of the mixture. Hopefully you won't have to add too much ice.



If you're really enterprising, freeze some water in some water bottles, and you can use that. I just always fear mixing them up sometime and drinking them.

Please note that the picture above is of the chicken "relaxing prior to performance". Chicken was actually submerged in the salty depths of the stockpot for the duration of the brining time.

So why brine? Pull up a pillow my child, and let me explain about the scientific miracles of what you may already know, deep in your mind, from long ago.

To be continued...