Cycle 13 – Item 307
8 (Tue) November 2022
Roast Chicken
3.0
by me
at home
-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-
with the Family
A few tips on oven-roasting a chicken from the Bon Appétit channel on YouTube.
- Spatchcock the chicken by cutting out the backbone and flattening the body so that the interior cavity is opened up, all the parts are more-or-less at the same depth, and the entire bird thus cooks quickly and evenly (hard to believe that it’s never been featured on GMTD until now – in fact, I didn’t even bother to take a photo, assuming that I’d covered it before).
- Poke a few holes in the skin to facilitate rendering of fat and increase crispiness.
- Heat the pan on high then place the chicken breast-side down to get a head-start on the skin while the underside of the bird (the exposed interior cavity) gets roasted first.
- At the halfway point (after 30 minutes – good for a pair of 800-gram birds) (at 230 degrees – my tiny oven’s max setting), flip the chicken over and roast for another 25 minutes until the skin begins to turn golden brown.
- For the final 5 minutes, baste with butter and garlic.
- Remove from the oven, rest for at least 10 minutes covered in foil, serve.
Excellent, for the most part. Having cooked spatchcocked chicken in the vague and distant past, I’d been clinging to the general notion that the technique would save time but result in drier meat, by exposing all the nooks that would retain juices. But I was very happy to find that the bird turned out beautifully moist, even without brining or some trick to retain moisture (see for example 9.321 Roast Chicken). Tip 4 was the only disappointment, as the garlic scorched a bit, and the butter didn’t really contribute much. Other than that, this is how I’m roasting chickens.
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)