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Roast Chicken: 5 Mistakes We Make Often
Roast Chicken: 5 Mistakes We Make Often

Video: Roast Chicken: 5 Mistakes We Make Often

Video: Roast Chicken: 5 Mistakes We Make Often
Video: Big Mistakes Everyone Makes When Roasting Chicken 2024, March
Anonim

Where do you ideally place the roast chicken? Probably, on the Sunday table, an edible symbol of family unity, but also a mirror of its dynamics.

How many fights between brothers for who could win the thigh! While mom only served a slice of skinless breast (you know, the line, she winked at dad). And grandmother, quietly, cut out the priest's bite, and ate only that one, proudly claiming that it was the best of the best, in reality not to deprive her son and grandchildren of the rest of the succulent bird.

I bet you each have the same or different anecdotes about the home roast chicken ritual. And I'm not talking about the delicious rotisserie (which saved my life, among other things, during a couple of moves, when the kitchen was not yet - or no longer - assembled).

But of that purchased fresh, seasoned and cooked to perfection in the oven (barbecue is a separate chapter)

I know many of you already have your perfect recipe. After all, to say, there is also a great like Ferran Adrià who included it in the book Il cena in famiglia (published in Italy by Phaidon in 2011), where by family he did not mean wife and children but brigade boys.

The Spanish supermegachef brought together in a full-bodied volume, divided into menus, what was cooked at El Bulli before shifts.

Which is what is cooked in our homes when we do not succumb to the flattery of gastrofighettism but we only want magnà.

It being understood that we want to eat well and, therefore, avoid the most common mistakes even in making a simple roast chicken.

1. Grab the first chicken that passes

Baked chicken
Baked chicken

Never as in this case, quality is important. A pale and mushy drum chicken loses across the board when compared to a free-range organic chicken, bred with all the trappings, well fed and free to kick around and develop muscles.

The industrial chicken caught in the super is watery and makes the sauce a transparent soup. The meat pulps under the teeth and when you grab the thigh, the bone remains in your hand.

The free-range one is already colored raw, has the right amount of subcutaneous fat, which softens the meat and makes the skin crisp, never too thin. And when you go to eat it, whether you use a knife and fork or your hands, you have to work a little to remove the bites, but what a satisfaction!

Because it is true that the chicken is ready when the meat withdraws from the bones and comes off easily, but easily does not mean just touching it.

On the contrary, a certain toughness is a guarantee that you have bought a good product.

Doses. Given that Ferran Adrià for 4 people recommends a 2 kilo chicken, I tell you that, in general, a chicken is cut into 6 parts (2 thighs with their under-thigh, 2 wings with their part of the breast, 2 half-breasts remaining) and therefore - whatever its weight - it is right for 6 people, 7 if there is a grandmother who is satisfied with the priest's bite.

2. Not seasoning it enough

chicken, seasoning
chicken, seasoning

You can do like the Spanish chef, who sprinkles the outside - well oiled and salted - with lemon zest and a fine powder of bay leaf, rosemary, thyme and pepper.

You can do as the French do, rub it with garlic and grease it with melted butter.

But even the oil alone is fine, massaged together with the salt also reaching the folds under the wings and thighs.

As you know, chicken has a cavity. Which can be simply salted and peppered (do it before seasoning the outside), or contain aromatic ingredients.

Are you passionate about the Adrià method? Add lemon wedges (the same one you grated the zest) and a couple of dressed garlic. But don't deprive yourself of the freedom to throw in sprigs of sage and rosemary or whatever you like best.

3. Let it languish in the bottom

chicken in the oven
chicken in the oven

We arrive at the time of the oven. Which must already be hot. Very hot. Adrià indicates 220 °, which you can lower to 210 ° if you use the ventilated function that I prefer: it is true that it tends to dry out a bit, but you can always sprinkle the beast with its cooking juices to keep it soft.

The cooking juices: this can be a problem. Because if you put the chicken in the pan and don't worry about it anymore, the juices it releases create a puddle on the bottom which, fatally, makes the base of the chicken boiled and soft.

There are two solutions.

The first, by Adrià: cook the chicken for the first 25 minutes with the breast down, then turn it breast up for the remaining 35 minutes (times, in my opinion, are for a chicken of about 1.8 kilos, naturally adjustable according to your oven / chicken).

The second, from FRM: place the chicken on a grill, placed on top of the pan or dripping pan, so that the juices collect underneath.

By combining the two techniques (on the grid, chest down, then chest up), the best results are obtained.

Of course, unless you have (and know how to use) the rotisserie. Or those earthenware gadgets that look like a Mexican sombrero, on the tip of which you can put the chicken so that it drips sauce without ever coming into contact with it.

Yes, there is also the Yankee variant with a can of beer, with which to "impale" the bird: has anyone ever tested it?

4. Do not reduce the sauce

roast chicken, frying pan
roast chicken, frying pan

Whatever cooking technique you choose, in the end an abundant bottom will form on the bottom of the pan. At this point, you need to remove the chicken from the pan and keep it warm: put it on a plate covered with aluminum, but without squeezing it, so as not to create the sauna effect that makes it lose its crunchiness.

Then, as master Adrià teaches, deglaze the base over the flame with a few tablespoons of white wine and water, reduce and, if you really want something elegant, filter through a Chinese colander. But even no.

5. Forget the potatoes

baked potatoes
baked potatoes

There is no roast chicken without baked potatoes. I don't like making them in the same pan, because they end up soaking in the bottom and being half cooked.

Also in this the ventilated function of the oven helps, which by circulating the heat allows them to cook even if their pan is under that of the chicken.

Just bring them up (perhaps with the grill on), while you finish the sauce, to give them the final splash of color.

Then, you can always do like Ferran, who serves the chicken - the same one prepared with so much care and love - accompanied by matchstick chips in the bag.

After all he, with the fries in the bag, also makes (in the same book) an omelette. In conclusion, Carlo Cracco he did not invent anything - but at least, the San Carlo paid for it!

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