Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The hot chick


Sunday is roasting day. Or as they say on Little Britain "It's the law". Yes, the British Sunday roast tradition is a tradition for a reason...it's delish. Beef, pork, chicken, lamb... whatever you choose, it MUST come with all the trimmings and be served between 5 and 6pm.
I don't do the Sunday roast as often as I'd like, mainly due to time constraints as PB and don't work a typical M-F work week. However, this Sunday I was committed and determined. It had been too long and it was frankly frickin' freezing outside at -15C with a windchill of -20C. Only a hot roast chicken would take the edge off that.
I had been told that it is possible to roast a chicken in under an hour at a high temp by PB's mum (aka condiment queen). She is a very good cook and so I was intrigued to try this method of cooking and subsequently checked the location of the smoke detectors were very far away from the oven. This was gonna get smoky.
I had a small air chilled chicken from Superstore. They are one of the few places that sells air chilled chicken and IMO, it makes a big difference with the moistness of the meat when cooking.
I checked out some methods online and determined that 425 F/220C was the key temp.
I pre-heated the oven to 425F, brushed the chicken excessively in melted butter and then sprinkled on dried rosemary, sage and savory and threw in some salt.
I put the bird in a really oversized pan (we don't have a smaller one at present) and put the oven light on so I could check that it wasn't on fire without opening the door and adding a whole lot more O2 to said fire.
CQ was right. This method works. Yes there was smoke when I opened the door (and a fair amount of fear-this is why wine is mandatory when trying new recipes) but I attribute that to the (excessive) butter spreading out over the pan base and the chicken fat joining it. I don't have an issue with that and the smoke detectors didn't go off once. 45 mins later I was still skeptical and got my meat thermometer out to do the all important 185F test. The needle on that thing moved faster than the speed of light. This bird was done and done!
And yes it was moist, the skin was crispy, the meat was very tasty and from now on, this will be my default cooking method for poulet!

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