Roast Chicken and Potatoes
Posted in Main Course, Recipes on March 29th, 2009 by JT
Roasting a chicken is one of those quintessential things you are supposed to be able to do if you consider yourself a cook. I have a confession to make. I have been cooking for around 8 years now and I have never made a good roast chicken. That is until now.
One of my problems is that I refuse to use recipes. It feels like cheating to me. It doesn’t feel like you have learned anything, just memorized something. Because of that, the first few chickens I roasted came out sad and flabby and I stopped roasting chickens. Since then I have read a lot more about roasting chicken, and while this attempt still wasn’t perfect, it was a vast improvement and created the best potatoes I have ever had in my life.
Roast Chicken and Potatoes
1 chicken -unsure of weight
Potatoes -enough to create a bed for the chicken
Salt – 1 cup + 2 tablespoons
Baking Soda – 1 Tablespoon
Water – Enough to cover chicken
Pepper, Parsley, Lemon and Garlic – For stuffing the cavity and seasoning
1. Starting with the chicken, I buy my free range, organic chicken from a farmer. While the chicken does taste more “chicken-y” than the grocery store variety, the main difference I have found is the amount of fat. Farmer chicken has much more.
2. 48 hrs in advance, brine the chicken. I place the chicken in a pot, add water until chicken is covered, remove the chicken and mix in a cup (give or take) of salt, and then stir. No need to heat it, the salt dissolved just fine, and I don’t add any other flavors because I’m not really using this as a flavoring as much as to trap moisture in the cells and give me less of a chance of over cooking.
3. 24 hours in advance, remove chicken from brine and dry thoroughly. Once chicken is very dry create a rub of 2 Tblspns salt and 1 Tblspn baking soda. This is to desiccate the chicken skin and really give you thin, crispy skin. Rub this all over the chicken skin. Return to the fridge uncovered.
4. Preheat the oven to 375, remove the chicken from the fridge. Using a knife cut a bunch of slits in the chickens back to allow the fat to escape as the chicken cooks. Stuff the chicken cavity with a halved lemon, a few cloves of crushed garlic and a bunch of parsley.
5. Cut up your potatoes (I used fingerling because it is what I had) and create a bed for the chicken in your roasting pan. Place the chicken on its back on top of the potatoes
6. Roast chicken for 25 minutes at 375, turn up heat to 475 and roast for another 25 minutes, turn off heat and let cook for 10 more minutes or until the thigh registers 180.
7. Move the chicken to a carving board and let rest, move the potatoes (golden and crisp on the pan side) to a serving bowl add salt if desired, pepper and chopped parsley.
The brining plus salt rub results in a pretty salty chicken. That’s how I like my chicken, if you don’t I would reduce or eliminate the salt rub. Yes, this recipe involves a lot of advance prep, and not all of it is worth it. Going forward I will remove the baking soda, it left a little bit of a baking soda flavor, the skin on the back turns out soft from sitting on the potatoes, and I think that the salt plus 24 hours in the fridge uncovered will do enough to dry the skin. Finally, I’m not sure what I added by putting lemon, garlic and parsley inside, next time I’ll leave it out and see what type of difference it makes.
Here is a close up of the chicken skin where the thigh meets the body that shows the tissue paper like consistency the skin had.
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That looks great! I’ve never heard of rubbing chicken with baking soda – and I would probably skip this step myself as there are other ways to get the desired crispiness.
Just a note of interest – the pictures you posted are all distorted for me – all stretched out.
Hey JT – glad to see your first post! Sounds like your dish was a success! Since you are now doing more organic shopping & cooking, have you used sea salt in your cooking yet? I believe it’s saltier/more flavorful so you only need half the normal amount. Just wondering if you have used it & what your thoughts on it are. I told Van I want to start using it.
Looking forward to more posts… And Devon, sometime soon.
I’ve never heard of the baking soda before… and while it does not sound like something I would do, I think I may give it a try simply because I have never had it. I don’t want to block it out – once I’ve tried, then I’ll see..
I had intended on doing Cornish Hens today but life got int he way, I may do so tomorrow and I’ll use this for a base. The potatoes really sound good, too!
@WC – what other ways do you suggest on getting the crispiness. Also, I noticed the pictures too. I’ll see what’s up with that.
I use sea salt almost exclusively in my cooking. Generally I keep 3 salts around. Sea salt for cooking, big container of morton salt for things like salting pasta water, or throwing in the bottom of a pan to absorb juices/prevent smoking, and some type of decorative salt for dressing salads etc. right now that is Himalayan pink salt.
I stole the baking soda trick from a baked buffalo wing recipe I read somewhere. I was curious about those “other mehods” WC mentioned also. The pic’s look normal on both my work and home computer, we’ll have to discuss tomorrow.
I’m curious about her other methods as well. I just picked up a few Cornish Hens, I’d be curious to try the other methods as well…
RE: Pix, we’ll chat on the morrow.
The method I use for crispy chicken skin is to salt it well and start it off at a really high temperature – like 500F – for about 20 – 25 minutes. Then lower the temp to 375 – 400 for the rest of the cooking time. Kind of the opposite to what JT’s instructions say in the post.
BTW, the picture thing seems to be rectified now.
Thanks WC! I’ll give yours a try tomorrow.
Glad to see the pictures are working now.
The Magster saw that picture and screamed…”It’s a decapitated chicken!!”
I think it looks really gd!
@ I’m with Noodles:
Sounds like the exercise in etimology is going well! Personally, I would be more creeped out if the roast chicken HAD it’s head intact. The only prepared animal that I can eat with it’s head still on is fish.
Mags cracks me up
JT makes a lot of good stuff…. The potatoes sound amazingly good.
I’ve made great roasted chickens many times…but I’m fascinated with the brining and baking soda…will give it a try…sounds great.
I especially like seasoning my chicken with garlic, salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme…
the potatoes get tossed in garlic, rosemary, and salt and pepper and olive oil…I skip the thyme on the potatoes…
and you can make roasted potatoes like that without the chicken too.
I grew up with a rotisserie in our oven…mmm…talk about awesome chicken….
@Gianna
Your Chicken/potatoes recipe sounds really good as well.
When JT did the baking soda, his one complaint was that it kept a bit of the taste. That is my fear from trying it.
That made me laugh really hard when I scrolled back up to the picture, especially with the big chef’s knife in the background. One of the the good/bad things about buying your meat from a farmer is it still looks like the animal. I had to cut the tail off before cooking and it still contained the tips if the feathers.