Roasted Perfection!

Just wanted to test out my new kitchen gadget, an inexpensive food thermometer (the ones with the long cord) on a chicken today and it was a great success!

I have cooked thanksgiving twice already and each year seems to come down to how well the bird was cooked. I've cooked three birds already and had each possible result show up: perfect, undercooked, and overcooked - it's always frustrating when you carve into the bird with your guests waiting. Well this time it's going to be different because I bought myself a tool that will bulletproof the cooking process down to a science.

I've seen these thermometers before and actually did buy a real cheap $5 one form the supermarket but had very terrible success, it was some metal one that had a non-digital readout -- very poor performance and a pain to check. The new one i got was the luxury equivalent complete with a digital reader, a temperature alarm and also a heat proof probe that can extend from tabletop into the overn - all for around $15 @ a department store.

A little history of myself, I've grown up on PBS cooking shows, it's usually on when i came back from school so I always was amazed at how Jacques Pepin was in the kitchen with his detailed work and great techniques that he would share. I think i liked him the best because the work he does really outshines most of the other television chefs - he seems more legit to me. Also his recipes are very open and easy to modify unlike some other chefs. I've seen those videos of Julia Child and her informative talks about chicken and roasting; also videos of cleaning and preparing birds from various videos. I was prepared, and also curious at the same time how well this tool will do - since Alton Brown approves I will trust him 100%.

Roasted chicken to me sounded a bit boring and also i'd admit very plain - i was surprised how much Julia Child appreciated a good roasted chicken and never felt the urge to do it because of the difficulty. My family often cooks their chicken whole via the steam method and are often proud when the chicken comes out great - but most often it comes out raw or overcooked. I've studied a lot of videos in the past to prepare turkey for thanksgiving and they all say it's similar to chicken process-wise so I just followed the same procedure. As you can see the results from the photo and my raving about this product, the tool actually works and I had the opportunity to taste the difference firsthand!

Detailed information on how to roast a chicken:
REQUIREMENTS:
- Whole Chicken or Bird
- Oil (something that can tolerate heat, i use canola NOT OLIVE)
- Salt
- Aluminum Foil
- Something to cook it in and also an elevated wire rack.
- Oven 350-500 degrees

Roasting a chicken is pretty simple, it can be done in three steps: cleaning, seasoning, and baking - but there are tips to do each of these that can help a beginner out.

Cleaning:
Usually the chicken comes whole with all the hearts and livers inside the cavity - remove these out and rub the entire bird with salt until you think you cleaned it pretty well. Now you rinse the bird and let it dry up and rest for a while (1 hour?) to reduce cooking times. After the hour is up you better dispose of the water that leaked out of the chicken, if any, and prepare for the seasoning step.

Seasoning:
For something very basic, a good smothering of salt would be good - just pat as much as you like around the skin and all around the cavity you will need to coat the bird with oil also so make sure there is enough salt to go around the bird. You can always enhance flavoring by putting other personal seasonings!

Preparation/Cooking:
This is probably the step that will be a bit more creative and also have optional steps to enhance the results. Usually a bird's white and dark meats cook unevenly so I borrowed the turkey triangle tip from thanksgiving. The turkey triangle (from Good Eats) is just a sheet of foil folded in half into a triangle and you mold it on the breast side of the chicken so that it is completely covered in the baking process. This tip will help reduce the cooking of the breast meat. There is another tip i know to speed up the cooking process, the other tip from Jacques Pepin would be to make deep cuts around the drumstick / thigh area because usually that is where things get raw - this will release juices while cooking but will speed up the cooking process for the dark meat. While the bird is breast-side up, tuck the wing tips under the wings themselves and also make sure the chicken legs / drumsticks are held together by string or tuck them through the flesh between the breast and thighs after making a small incision (see photo). Now stick that meat thermometer into the thickest part of the breast meat, I stuck it from the rear and drove it under the wishbone area.

Place the chicken on a wire rack and have a dripping pan for it - you don't want to cook the bird in its own juices. Now that the bird is ready, first you want to put the chicken into the 500 degree oven for a few minutes (10-20mins) until the chicken gets some browning. After you have the desired browning, put the turkey triangle onto the breast meat and reduce the oven temperature to around 375 Fahrenheit. Now just close the door and wait until the internal temperatures reach 165 and your chicken is done and ready to eat - it took me under an hour after browning.

My chicken was buttery and flavorful - simple indeed but great!