NOT Your Grandmother's Roast Chicken

Creative Seasoning & Recipes: 1 Chicken: 3 Meals

Roasting a whole chicken seems like a time-consuming dish reserved for special occasions. Often we buy just a couple of chicken pieces for easier cooking. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts have been over-touted as the best cuts for weight- and heart health-conscious eating. In turn, big agribusiness has responded by pumping poultry full of hormones and corn feed to produce huge chicken breasts for consumer appeal. 

In truth though, most of the fat in chicken skin is healthy, unsaturated fat; leaving the skin on when cooking allows for flavorful and tender meat. (Be mindful though that a healthy fat food is still high in calories, so limit yourself to just a small piece of that delectable, crispy skin!). Poultry's dark meat in the thighs provides a bit more iron than the lighter breast meat. 

Roasting a whole chicken provides for several versatile meal options over the course of a week and can be rather economical. The roast chicken served with vegetables is the primary meal; trimming meat from the bird and tossing it with whole grains or pastas provides for a second meal; boiling the carcass with water, herbs, veggies, and seasonings makes for a delicious, healthy chicken broth to be used for soup right then, or freezing the broth for another time. Note: If you don't have the time or inclination to boil the carcass when it's ready, you can freeze it to boil at another time.

The best roast chicken starts with a good bird, preferably from a local farm, raised humanely without antibiotics where the animal has been allowed to hunt and peck (grass fed). Poultry animals are true omnivores in that they eat worms and bugs, along with plant material. So don't be duped when the commercial poultry package you pick up claims the bird has been fed an "all vegetable diet". Most likely this means the poultry manufacturer has taken advantage of the cheap plethora of corn, and fed that soley to thousands and thousands of chickens in confined quarters (often unsanitary).

Local farmers will most likely have frozen birds for sale which will take some planning to defrost on your part for when you want to roast it. Many farmers markets in the region will have at least one farmer with frozen roasters for sale. Get to know your regional farmers who raise chickens to learn when they'll be ready for harvest and fresh for your use. If a local bird is not readily accessible, check food co-ops or green grocers for Vermont's Misty Knoll poultry www.mistyknollfarms.com/ or Murray's Chicken from Pennsylvania www.murrayschicken.com. Most likely you will pay more for these birds than supermarket specials, but you will get a much healthier product that will taste dramatically and distinctly better, AND, you will be supporting sustainable agriculture!

OK, now for a recipe! Over a year ago, I came across a great cookbook that offers 20 ways to roast chicken in addition to another 80 recipes for complimentary side dishes and soups to make from the roast chicken carcass. Mindy Fox's A Bird In The Oven And Then Some has truly made roasting a chicken a savoring event in my house! Some of the ingredients in her recipes may be new and different for you, but the end result is so worthwhile. Here's one I prepared recently, adapted from Mindy's book:

Tea-Brined Five-Spice Roast Chicken

This recipe may only look complicated, yet merely requires combining the seasonings to make a brine with tea and spices. Allow the chicken to marinate overnight in the brine. You will be in awe at how tender and flavorful it is after roasting!

8 cups Water

1 Orange

12 Plain Black Teabags 

or 1/2 cup Loose Black Tea

5 Whole Cloves

2 Cinnamon Sticks

2 Whole Star Anise Pods

1 tsp Whole Black Peppercorns

1 tsp Fennel Seeds

3 slices Fresh Ginger

(each ~ 1 1/2" long x 1/8" thick)

1/2 cup Kosher Salt

1/4 cup Dark Brown Sugar

(I used Real Maple Sugar...mmm!)

1 Whole Chicken (4-pound minimum)

1.   In large stockpot, bring water to a boil.

2.   Zest the orange (avoid white pith)

3.   If using loose tea, spoon into filter bags or wrap in cheesecloth.

4.   When water boils, remove from heat and add orange zest, tea, spices, ginger, letting the mixture steep, uncovered for 20 minutes

5.   Remove tea and squeeze moisture from bags or cloth.

6.   Add salt and sugar, stir until dissolved, then squeeze juice from orange into mixture.

7.   Pull off any excess fat around bird cavity. Rinse chicken, pat dry and put in a large glass bowl.

8.   Pour marinade over the chicken, cover and refrigerate for at least 12-24 hours. During this time, turn the chicken a few times. (The longer brining time, the depper the flavor.)

9.   Remove chicken from brine and pat dry inside and out. Set bird on a rack and return to refrigerator, uncovered, to allow to dry more for crispy skin.

10. Heat oven to 450F with the rack in the middle. Put an 8- to 10-inch cast iron skillet, or heavy roasting pan, into the heated oven for 10 minutes.

11. Carefully remove hot skillet from oven and immediately place bird, breast side up in skillet and into oven. Roast for 20 minutes, then turn breast side down and roast for another 20 minutes. Then return bird to breast side up and roast until the juices run clear when thigh is pricked with fork, about 20 minutes. Allow bird to rest in pan for 15 minutes before carving.

DELICIOUS!