Culinate

Roast Chicken

From the book The Basic Gourmet by Diane Morgan, Dan Taggart, Kathleen Taggart, and Georgia Vareldzis
Serves 4

Introduction

Roasting a chicken is so easy to do that it ought to be against the law! If you can fall out of bed, you’ve got the brains to do this. So pay attention. All you really need is an oven that works, an ovenproof baking pan, a roasting rack that fits the pan and — ideally — an instant-read thermometer. OK, for a more professional look you can rustle up a little white kitchen string and truss the hapless bird so it looks like it came from some snooty “gourmet” restaurant, but it is not required. The bird roasts just as well in—how do we say this—a “relaxed” position. A properly roasted chicken is wonderfully moist and goes with all manner of accompaniments plain or fancy, such as corn on the cob, baked or parslied potatoes, sautéed carrots, or steamed green beans. Leftover roasted chicken is worth killing for!

Ingredients

1 fresh chicken (2½ to 5 pounds)
~ Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Steps

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Liberate the fowl from its plastic bag if it came so clothed. Remove the bag of giblets (all of which were once vital to the bird’s well-being) from the cavity. (See Cook’s Notes for ideas on using them.) Pull out any large fat deposits from the cavity. Trim any loose skin with a sharp knife. Removing the tail is optional—some people think it looks cute.
  2. Place a roasting rack in a baking pan with sides at least 1 inch high. (We often use one of those 9x13-inch glass baking pans that accommodate an adjustable V-shaped roastrack.) Set the bird on the rack breast side up. Grind a little fresh pepper onto it and sprinkle lightly with salt. Adding a little salt in the cavity is optional; some cooks do, some don’t.
  3. Place the baking pan on a rack in the lower-middle section of the oven. Roast until the juices run clear when a sharp knife is inserted into the joint between the body and thigh, or when your instant-read thermometer registers 170°F testing the same joint, 45 to 60 minutes. Remove chicken from the oven, cover loosely with aluminum foil, and allow to rest for 10 minutes before you carve. This rest allows the juices to “set,” resulting in a moister chicken and less juice loss on your carving board.
  4. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to carve a roast chicken, but you do need a sharp knife (a chef’s knife works if you don’t own a carving knife). With the bird sitting breast side up on your cutting board, cut down between the thigh and the body until you feel bone; use your hands or a carving fork to twist the leg/thigh away from the body so you can see the joint. Just cut through the joint and you’ve got a leg/thigh ready to serve. Repeat on the other side of the bird. If you want to serve the wings separately, use the same technique, cutting into the “armpit” under the wing to find the joint. Twist the wing out and cut through the joint. To carve the breast meat off the body of the bird, make a cut along each side of the “keel” bone running along the top of the breast. Angle your knife slightly toward the rib cage while you loosen the meat by moving your knife back and forth down the side of the chicken. Use the tip of the knife to cut the meat away from the diagonal wishbone at the
  5. wide end of the bird; each half-breast piece of meat should come off the chicken pretty much in one piece. What remains is the rib cage and back of the chicken. Pick the carcass later for fine leftover meat for soups or salads.

Notes

This content is from the book The Basic Gourmet by Diane Morgan, Dan Taggart, Kathleen Taggart, and Georgia Vareldzis.

Copyright 2006 Culinate, Inc