| ESTIMATED CALORIC INFO | |
|---|---|
| Serving Size | 1 c chicken, 1/2 c potatoes, 1 tbsp glaze, chard |
| Calories | 600 |
| Calories from Fat | 45% |
| Calories from Carbs | 30% |
| Calories from Protein | 25% |
To love food is to know food. Intimately.
And yet I’d always balked at cooking an actual whole chicken, opting instead to only cook chicken in the unnatural form of convenient, entree sized, no-carving-necessary boneless skinless breasts. Sure, I’d get the better stuff, I knew just from taste that I wasn’t interested in buying Tyson products here. But the thought of dealing with a whole chicken, in all its slippery and slimey glory, was admittedly a bit intimidating to me for awhile.
Eventually, it was really farmer’s markets that got me past that. I wanted pastured, local chickens, the best tasting that my money can buy. And local farms just are not going to process their poultry the same way the big producers do, organic or not. If you want chicken breast, it’s going to come with a chicken attached. So I steeled myself to the idea, knowing in the end the pay off would be worth it, and learned what to do with a whole chicken.
This was maybe two years ago now. I still occasionally go the boneless, skinless route every once in awhile when I’m low on time, but I try to avoid it. To me, the bottom line is that the taste is just really not comparable. I could get into all kinds of environmental, political, and moral arguments for the reasons why people should only eat pasture raised local poultry, but to me – while those issues are important, and I’d love to have a conversation about them sometime – they don’t really need to come into the decision because the taste factor trumps it all anyway.
I’ve got my chicken in a stock pot here because I like to brine it while it’s thawing. I take the chicken out a good 6-7 hours before I’m ready to cook it to make sure that it’s completely thawed by roasting time. To brine the chicken, add a tbsp of salt to the water and a little bit of sugar. The sugar will make the skin caramelize better.
You may also need to remove giblets/innards/etc. anything that’s leftover inside the chicken – now would be the time to do so. Set them aside and save them for chicken stock.
Prep time: 45 min (plus 4-6 hours for chicken prep)
Cook time: 1 1/2 hours
| ESTIMATED FOOD MILES | |
|---|---|
| Chicken | 45 miles |
| Fresh herbs | 0 miles |
| Lemon | 900 miles |
| Garlic | 200 miles |
| Currants | 5,000 miles |
| Pecans | ??? miles |
| Apple Juice | ??? miles |
| Honey | 300 miles |
| Apples | 250 miles |
| Bread | 20 miles |
| Pork Sausage | 45 miles |
| Half and Half | 250 miles |
| Rainbow Chard | 250 miles |
| Potatoes | 250 miles |
| Total | ~7,500 miles |
Ingredients…
- 1 whole chicken
- an assortment of fresh herbs
(parsley, rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage are all standards for chicken)
- half a lemon
- 4 or 5 garlic cloves
- 1 cup of currants
- 1 cup crushed pecans
- 1/4 cup of apple juice
- 3 tbsp honey
- 3 apples
- 2 1/2 to 3 cups of bread pieces
(use good bakery bread here, the flavors will be center stage in the stuffing)
- 1/2 pound of pork sausage
- 1/2 cup of half and half
- 4 or 5 leaves rainbow chard
- several of your favorite potatoes
- 1 Nugget Nectar (optional)
I’m not doing so great on the food miles, huh? The major components are local but I’ve got a few things spiking that chart. The currant was a concession, I guess. Maybe I’m a little too eager for spring to be here.
The first thing you’ll want to do is make the stuffing, so that we can stuff the stuffing. We’ll cook it mostly in the chicken cavity but we need to do a little prep first.
Warm up your skillet with olive or canola oil in it.
Cut the pork sausage into bite sized pieces and lightly brown it in the skillet (it shouldn’t be fully cooked, it will finish inside the chicken).
Chop apples up into small diced cubes and put them in the skillet.
Take the bread and tear it up into little pieces, add to skillet.
Add half and half to skillet.
Warm it all up until all the half and half is absorbed in the bread and the apples are starting to look translucent. If there’s too much liquid, add more bread. If there’s too much bread, add more half and half. Take some of your fresh herbs and chop them up nice and small to throw over the skillet. I used parsley, sage, oregano, and thyme. A liberal salting here won’t hurt anything either.
While the stuffing is warming up, take your whole chicken out of the stock pot and put it in a roasting dish. I use a large (like maybe 11×13?) pyrex dish.
Drizzle chicken in olive oil (both sides).
Make a few slits in the skin but do not remove it entirely, the skin will help keep moisture in as the chicken is roasting.
Take some leftover herbs and stuff them as deep down under the skin as you can. If you can get near the leg and wing joints, all the better. The flavor will cook through the meat as it’s roasting. Cut your garlic cloves in half or in threes, and put a piece of garlic in with all the other herbs under the skin (but remember where you put them so somebody doesn’t mistake a piece of garlic for a potato later on).
Slice your lemon in half and then into thirds. Put two pieces all the way up into the cavity, and add another clove of garlic there for good measure.
Next, take the stuffing and put as much as you can fit inside the chicken. Cook the rest on the skillet until the sausage is finished (these will be leftovers).
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Now you’re ready for the simple and easy task of chopping up some chunks of potatoes.You want them to be a decent size. Wash your potatoes, set them out on your cutting board, and start chopping. This is the sort of thing I do so frequently I don’t even have to pay attention to it. I just let my mind wander on other thoughts, perhaps dwelling on just how good this food is going to turn out, or more likely circling around some random work task I can’t get off my head. At any rate, cutting potatoes is so much like second nature now that I just
CUT THE HELL OUT OF MY FINGER!!!!! Pain pain pain pain pain pain pain OW OW OW OW OW PAIN PAIN OW.
Shot of Jameson – STAT.
Okay I really took a serious chunk of my finger off this time. I’ve had kitchen cuts and nicks before but this was a serious flesh wound. I thought I’d need stitches. Thought I was gonna pass out any minute. Took about a good 20-30 minutes for the bleeding to even slow down. Fortunately, moments after my vocal chords registered the pain, I immediately had the best and sweetest nurse ever by my side to take care of me. I do love how getting hurt triggers that wonderful maternal instinct.
Apologies ahead of time for the weak at heart but this was serious.
Yet I did not need stitches. I did not pass out. I was babied for awhile by my awesome wife, and I survived. And people needed to eat!
Deep breath.
Reset.
Let’s go.
Finish chopping up the potatoes, VERY CAREFULLY.
Throw them around the chicken in the roasting dish.
Drizzle chicken and potatoes with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and dash with pepper.
Tuck the chicken wings under the legs, this will keep the tips from burning.
Put the bird in the oven.
The rule of thumb for roasting a chicken is 20-20-20. 20 minutes up, 20 minutes over, 20 minutes up. In my experience, though, that must be for pretty small chickens. In most cases I’ve wound up doing more like 25-30 for each turn. But the pattern remains – first section chicken turned up, second turned down, and third turned back up again.
While roasting, you can make the currant glaze.
Combine the currants, honey, apple juice in a blender or processor until smooth.
Take out and put in a bowl, and add pecans.
Confession: I made up the glaze on the spot. It turned okay, but a little on the tart side. I encourage experimenting with this part.
Wash and chop up the chard. Put it in a skillet with some olive oil and cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes.
After your 25-25-25, pull the chicken out of the oven.
By now, your kitchen smells AWESOME.
The best way to check to make sure your chicken is fully cooked is to check the inside of the joint where the leg meets the body. This will be the last spot to cook, so if you slice it open and there’s any pink left, you’ll need to put it back in the oven for a few minutes longer. If you don’t see any pink there, it’s safe to say the rest is cooked. Bear in mind that meat will be darker there, but you still shouldn’t see any pink.
Let the chicken sit at least 10 minutes so the juices will set in the meat. Then you’re good to go – serve it up and enjoy.
Make sure to hang on to the chicken carcass once you’ve eaten it all – we’ll be making a stock with it in the near future. I usually save it in foil, and you can keep it in the fridge for maybe a week.
Winner winner.
