Skillet Roast Chicken

I think that the thing about learning how to cook that is most interesting to me is my continued surprise when I make something delicious. I suppose that this stems from the fact that I’ve always made mediocre food a home, depending on others for most of my meals. Mainly restaurants. It doesn’t help that ten years in NYC meant that it was usually cheaper to eat out anyway than to buy the ingredients for a single dish. This comic by The Oatmeal pretty much sums that up: Why I Don’t Cook At Home

Growing up I was lucky enough to have a mother who generally fed us things that were tasty, healthy and well prepared (with the possible exception of a red curry soup that mom made once when we were tweens that put me and my sister off curry for a decade or more). But growing up I occasionally ate outside the home and there are a number of dishes that were almost always badly prepared. This was true when eating over at friends houses and even out at restaurants. Hockey puck pork chops come to mind. Tough, grey, overly sauced beef dishes. Dry, tasteless roast chicken.

Of course, these days despite my alacrity in the kitchen not all of my cooking is successful. I was emailing with a friend back in New York who told me that it may be a good idea to talk about my failures in the kitchen as a contrast to my successes to add some depth to the blog. My decision to cook a whole chicken for dinner seemed like the perfect opportunity to show such a failure.

But I failed at failing.

No kidding, this is the roast chicken to end all roast chickens. I find it difficult to properly explain the joy and excitement I had when we cut into this baby and realized it didn’t suck. Crisp and tasty skin, moist and flavorful meat (both dark and white meat) and all without basting or marinating. Here are a few of things which really blew my mind:

• After the initial prep, cooking time was only about an hour
• That hour is nearly effort-free
• The cost of a couple chicken breasts at my local grocery store: $6-$8. Cost of an entire 3.5 lb chicken? $4.52

The recipe that I used is based on the Zuni Cafe recipe which goes with a bread salad (which I didn’t do this time around). It is apparently a very popular recipe (just do a search for zuni+roast+chicken to see the rave reviews). And you know what? The reviews are all true. This is the most easy, makes-you-feel-like-a-cooking-rockstore recipe ever. The key is the pre-treatment of bird 24 hours in advance. I don’t know from brining, but apparently the salt treatment the day before accounts for the moisture in the roasted bird.

After Action Report

I love the fact that there is no added fat in this recipe. The natural fat in the skin of the bird takes care of everything. There was even enough extra fat in the pan after the bird was cooked to make a very nice gravy – a skill I was shown once my by grandmother before she passed away which I am struggling to perfect. I’ll write a post on her technique when I get good at it.

I should have done some research on how to carve a chicken. I kind of butchered it. Ha ha. Seriously, I did a terrible job cutting it up. Hence the lack of photos of the chicken plated. Although to be honest, after I cut off the breasts and legs, Dr. Fiance and I just used our fingers to eat everything else – the meat just fell off the bone anyway. Don’t judge us for using our fingers – no one else was watching.

Will I make this again? You betcha.