In Episode 069 Susie shares all the tips and tricks for making Amazing Roasted Chicken… from juicy flavored meat to crispy golden skin. This is a recipe that takes 2-3 days, so you will want to plan ahead.
Transcript
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Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can get on the table any night of the week. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: Hey everybody. Welcome in. Have you guys ever wanted to make a full roast chicken, but it just feels so daunting to roast a whole chicken? What if the skin burns before the meat’s done? What if it doesn’t get crispy? What if I cut the chicken and the meat’s not cooked? There’s so many variables when you’re cooking an entire chicken, and so today I’m going to share with you my entire post on how to make the most perfect, crispy skin chicken that you’ve ever had. The breast meat and the thighs and the legs. They’re all going to be juicy and delicious and flavored, yet the skin is going to be brown and golden and crispy from top to bottom. You’re absolutely going to love it. However, this recipe does take at least two days to do the entire process, but that time and that care is what results in the best, most delicious chicken you’ve ever had.
With this audio recipe, I’m just going to kind of walk through the entire thing. You’ll get all of the tips and tricks along the way, so let’s go ahead and get started.
Tips and Tricks: First, let’s talk about buying really quality chicken. If you’re going to take two to three days to make roast chicken, then this is the time that you want to buy really quality chicken. In my experience, your best bet is going to be air chilled whole chicken. Then from there you can go with your organic or your grain fed or free range or whatever the other terms are that you’re looking for. But the most important one that has the biggest effect on texture and taste is air chilled. This is a more expensive process, so if a chicken company uses air chilling, they absolutely will put it right on the front of their packaging. I live in the Midwest and the brand that I always look for because I know it’s air chilled, is called Smart Chicken. If you have that in your grocery store, you can absolutely bet that it’s going to be perfect and delicious.
There are also a couple sneaky terms that people put on their chicken packaging that definitely mean nothing. The first one is all natural. All natural means nothing. It basically means your chicken is not made of plastic. Well, duh, right? The other one has no hormones added. It’s actually been illegal since the fifties to add additional hormones to the chickens. If you see both of those terms, pay no mind, they mean absolutely nothing.
Perfect Roasted Chicken Recipe: The next steps are going to take a couple days, so one to two days. So if you want to make this roast chicken, you definitely want to plan ahead. What you’re going to do is take your chicken out of the packaging and if it came already trussed, which means it’s tied up with string, go ahead and take that string off right now because what we’re going to do is salt the chicken and then we’re going to put it on like a drying rack and put it in the fridge for one to two days. The skin is going to start to dry out, which is going to make it super crispy in the oven. Then what’s going to happen is that kosher salt is actually going to start to make the bird like sweat kind of. It’s going to pull some moisture out, but then that moisture is going to mix with the salt and sink back in and flavor the actual meat of the chicken. This is a great way to get flavor all the way in your chicken.
Tips and Tricks: So what you’re going to do is take a large rimmed baking sheet, and then if you have a cookie sheet or a drying rack or something that will fit into that baking sheet, put that in there so that the chicken will be raised up off of the surface and air can circulate all the way around it. So pop your chicken on top of that rack, and then you’re going to salt your chicken on all sides and even inside of the cavity too. You’re going to want to do this with one tablespoon of kosher salt. Do not use iodized table salt for this process. You definitely want that coarser more delicate flavored salt. So kosher salt is where it’s at, and I use either Morton’s or Real salt, or my very favorite is Diamond Crystal.
So once you have that all nice and salted up, you’re going to put it in the refrigerator uncovered, because we want the air to circulate all around the chicken for 24 to 48 hours. What’s going to happen is the skin is going to start to darken and it’s going to start to dry out in the fridge. But that’s exactly what you want.
Okay, so after the chicken has dry brine in the fridge for one to two days, you’re going to now prepare it for roasting. First you’re going to start by stuffing herbs, lemon, garlic, all of that into the cavity of the chicken. So I like to take a whole entire garlic clove and just chop the top of it off, shove that in there, shove a little rosemary, thyme, parsley, and a few lemon wedges down into the chicken.
Then you’re going to truss, and I’m going to try and explain this as best I can. When you truss a bird, basically you’re pulling the legs and the wings up close to the bird so that it all cooks together and the legs and the wings don’t burn before the rest of the bird is cooked. You’re going to set the bird breast side up and you’re going to cut a really long piece of kitchen string. It’s also called butcher’s twine, or kitchen twine. You’re going to snuggle that right underneath the tail of the bird. Then you’ll bring each end up and around the outside of the legs, and then meet them up at the top, cross them and pull them down under and around the legs. So it’s like you’re circling the legs, and then when you bring that string back up, you’re going to pull it and it’s going to pull the legs right into the bird exactly where you want them. Then what you’re going to do is take that string and pull it up around to the top side of the bird and tie it right at the front. That’s it. That’s trussing. It’s pretty easy. If that sounds confusing, I’ve got some great pictures on the post that show you exactly how to do it.
Now, what you’re going to do is brush the skin with olive oil and be generous here. Make sure you add a lot of olive oil. That’s going to help the skin get nice and crispy in the oven. Then you’ll season with a little kosher salt and some black pepper, and then it’s ready to roast.
You’re going to preheat your oven to 475 degrees, and while the oven heats up, you’ll want to have your chicken out at room temperature. This is called tempering and it will take the chill off the chicken so that it cooks a little bit more evenly in the oven. So while all that’s happening, you’ll want to go ahead and prepare your roasting pan. What I like to do is put some veggies down at the bottom of the pan that I will actually serve with the chicken. Some things that I like to add in there are large carrots, red potatoes, onions, fennel, turnips, or even brussel sprouts. You’ll just put them down into the pan, coat them with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, a little bit of salt, little pepper, and give them a good toss. Then you can kind of move those veggies around to the outside and then pop that chicken, breast side up right into the middle of the pan. Then you’ll take that entire pan and roast it in the oven at 475 degrees, and this is uncovered, for about 25 minutes. Then you’re going to turn the heat down to 400 degrees and roast for another 45 minutes. At the end of that time, what you’ll want to do is check that the bird has reached at least 160 to 165 degrees at the thickest part, somewhere between the breast and the thigh. But you don’t want to touch a bone when you’re taking the temperature because you’ll get a false reading of temperature if you actually put the thermometer on a bone.
Our very favorite thermometer that we use is the Therma Works. I think it’s called Instant Read ThermaPen. I’ll link it in the show notes for you. It is the best piece of equipment. I use it all the time.
While your chicken is roasting, if at any point you feel like the skin is getting too dark, you can always tent it really loosely with foil. That will just stop that browning process. The chicken will still cook just from the ambient hot air, but it won’t have that direct heat to continue to brown that chicken.
All right. Once it is completely roasted, you’ll want to let it rest uncovered for about 20 minutes before carving. If you’ve never carved a chicken before, what you want to think about is that the chicken is in eight pieces. There are two wings, two breasts, two thighs and two legs. You’ll first of course, want to take the trussing off the chicken, so just clip that little string in one spot and it should just unravel from the chicken. Then what you want to do is carve your chicken up into those eight pieces.
How I like to do it is start by taking off the two breasts at the top and right in the center of the top, right in between the two breasts there runs the breast bone. What you can do is run your knife right along either side of that and then down and around the breast, and it should just literally pull away from the chicken carcass.
Then the wings up top will literally just pull away from the chicken and you can bend them in the opposite direction and they should just crack right off from the main chicken carcass. The next part is the thigh and the leg. These two usually come off as a combo really well. So the thigh is going to be underneath the chicken. Then of course the leg is the iconic piece of chicken that people hold. Those two should come off together really nicely. Then of course, you can take that leg off of the thigh or keep them attached and serve them as one piece.
Now what you’ll have left after you take all of that off is the chicken carcass. You can absolutely use this again. What I like to do is put the chicken carcass in a freezer safe baggie. Pop it in the freezer and then I will make chicken stock in my Instant Pot a few days later, a few weeks later. Sometimes I’ll even just pop that chicken carcass in the fridge and then make the chicken stock the next day. So I of course will link that recipe for you in the show notes.
Some great side dishes for roast chicken. You know, roast chicken is like a classic. Roast chicken, maybe make a little no drippings gravy. I’ve got a wonderful, wonderful recipe on momsdinner.net that I will share with you in the show notes. Maybe some mashed potatoes, and then just serve all the veggies that you cooked right underneath the chicken. It would be a beautiful dinner. So as always, I will link all of those recipes right in the show notes for you. So they will be there for you to pin, save, print, or make whenever you are ready. That does it for today’s episode.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your dinner time a little easier.
Tips Shared
Buy an air chilled chicken for the best taste and texture.
Dry the chicken by salting and putting the the fridge on a cooling rack for 1-2 days.
Start by roasting the bird at 475, then turning the temp down to 400.
When taking the internal temp make sure you are not touching a bone or you will get a false temperature.
Let the bird rest 20 minutes before carving.
Carve into 8 pieces: 2 breast, 2 wings, 2 legs, 2 thighs.
Save the carcass to make Chicken Stock.
Recipes Mentioned
Equipment Recommended
- Kitchen Twine
- Cooling Rack – fits a half sheet pan
- Roasting Pan
- Thermoworks Thermapen
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