May – Korean BBQ Chicken

May – Korean BBQ Chicken

Have you had a chance to try the Korean chili paste, gochujang? If not, I recommend you find some. I certainly haven’t explored the full range of possibilities for using it. I do know it makes an amazing component of a marinade. If you have an Asian grocery near you, I am sure you will be able to find it. As I don’t, it was available to order on Amazon.

Gochujang

Gochujang

According to Google…

Gochujang or red chili paste is a savory, sweet, and spicy fermented condiment popular in Korean cooking. It is made from gochu-garu (chili powder), glutinous rice, meju powder (fermented soybean powder), yeotgireum (barley malt powder), and salt. The sweetness comes from the starch of cooked glutinous rice, cultured with saccharifying enzymes during the fermentation process.

It is hot, but not overwhelmingly so. And the heat seems to dissipate when it’s cooked. It takes a starring role in this marinade recipe. I have used this marinade on both bone-on and boneless chicken breasts, and a whole roasted chicken. However, it would be equally delicious on a flank steak or baked tofu. You can marinate for an hour, or even better, overnight in the fridge.

Gochujang Marinated Korean BBQ Chicken

Gochujang Marinated Korean BBQ Chicken

Korean BBQ Marinade 

Ingredients:

  • 4 tablespoons gochujang
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced or grated
  • 1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
  • 2 tablespoons of unsweetened rice vinegar
  • 2 teaspoons of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of sesame oil
  • For the sauce – 2 tablespoons of honey
  • Garnish – chopped cilantro, chopped scallions

Method:

  1. For the marinade, combine all the ingredients, whisking to mix well.
  2. Set aside about 1/3 of the marinade and mix it with the honey. You will use this to drizzle over the finished dish.
  3. Brush all over the chicken, cover, and refrigerate in the refrigerator for an hour or overnight.
  4. When ready to cook, preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Brush with any remaining marinade and roast for 1 to 1-1/2 hours. The internal temperature should be 160 degrees F. I cooked my chicken breasts (boneless but with skin on) in the air fryer for 20 minutes at 350 degrees F.
Gochujang Marinated Chicken

Gochujang Marinated Chicken

The inspiration for this recipe came from a New Zealand Airlines inflight magazine.

I served it with a Thai-influenced chopped cabbage and kale salade.

Thai influenced chopped cabbage and kale salad

Thai-influenced chopped cabbage and kale salad

I’ll post that recipe later this week. It came from the blog Pinch of Yum.

Korean BBQ chicken and Thai influenced chopped cabbage and kale salad

Korean BBQ chicken and Thai-influenced chopped cabbage and kale salad

It was a great combination.

 

 

February – Rotisserie-Style Roast Chicken

February – Rotisserie-Style Roast Chicken

Roast chicken is one of my signature dishes. I routinely roast a chicken once a week and I am always looking for new flavors or new ways to roast it. This recipe came from the book Rick Stein’s Secret France, 120 delicious new recipes for real French home cooking. The interesting thing about the recipe is that the chicken is cooked at a low temperature for a long time, 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).

It’s a rainy cold day out outside and I can already smell the aroma of the house during that 2-2 1/2 hour cook time. I need that homey scent on such a dreary weekend day.

The chicken gets a classic preparation with lemon and garlic inside the cavity. Rub it with the flavored butter before popping it into the oven on the middle shelf. It’s the roasting at a low temperature that is new to me. I had a package of multi-colored carrots from Trader Joe’s to put into the bottom of the roasting pan and cook in the juices.

Ingredients:

  • I air-chilled, organic and free-range chicken (if possible) – it does make a difference (lucky you if you can get an heirloom one) See Note #1.
  • 1 lemon, halved
  • 1 whole head of garlic, cut in half horizontally (it doesn’t need to be peeled)
  • chunked potatoes or carrots or another root vegetable to put in the bottom of the roasting pan

Spiced rub for the chicken:

  • 3 tablespoons of softened butter
  • 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
  • pinch of red pepper
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 teaspoon of herbs de Provence or another favorite herb (thyme is always good)
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F or 150 degrees C
  2. Dry the chicken with paper towels and put the two lemon halves and half of the whole head of garlic inside.
  3. Mix the spices and herbs with the butter. Rub the seasoned butter all over the bird.
  4. Place the vegetables and the other garlic half (cut side down) in the bottom of the roasting pan. Place the chicken, breast down, on top. Drizzle with olive oil. See Note #2. Place the roasting pan on the middle shelf of the oven.
  5. After 1 hour turn the chicken breast side up and baste it with the pan juices.
  6. After another hour has passed, baste it again.
  7. Roast a total of 2-1/2 hours for a chicken of about 3-1/2 pounds in weight. See Note #1. My chicken was just over 4 1/2 pounds, it was done in 2-1/2 hours.
  8. If you would like additional browning (which I did), remove it from the oven (take out the vegetables) and raise the temperature to 450 degrees F. Put the chicken back in for 10 minutes to bronze the skin.

Roast Carrots

Note #1: If your chicken is over 3.5 pounds in weight you may need to roast it longer. If smaller it might be done sooner. Test by seeing if you can move a leg freely or check with an instant-read thermometer. The internal temperature should be 165 degrees F at the thickest part of the thigh.

Note #2: I don’t tie the chicken or truss it. The thighs take the longest time to cook, if the legs are tied together, close to the body, it increases the chance that the breast will overcook before the thighs are done.

Roast Chicken

The smells filling the house were amazing. I wish I could have bottled it up and included it in this post.

July – Roast Chicken in the Air Fryer

July – Roast Chicken in the Air Fryer

A whole roast chicken is one of my signature dishes, it’s on our menu at least once a week and I still haven’t run out of new and different ways to prepare it. Chicken finds its way into all international cuisines and lends itself to all manner of different flavors. Best of all, the leftovers provide inspiration for additional meals during the next week. And, the bones can be saved and used to make a delicious stock. I collect the carcasses in the freezer until I have enough to make a big pot of stock, then freeze it in quart containers. Homemade stock is so much better than anything you can buy in the store.

I have roasted chickens in the oven, on the BBQ, in a clay pot, in the instant pot and now in the air fryer. The air fryer is really only a small convection oven (although my own can do many more things that I haven’t tried yet). If it’s a hot day and you don’t want to turn on your oven, or too much trouble to start the BBQ, the air fryer can come to your rescue.

Every brand of air fryer is a little different, please check the directions that came with your own. Mine does not require pre-heating, your own may suggest it.

I used a quick dry salt brine for my chicken. I rubbed it with a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt and placed it, uncovered and on a small rack, in the fridge for about 6 hours. I then loosened the skin over the breast and thighs by gently slipping my fingers between the skin and the breast meat. I rubbed fennel spice over the meat of the breast. You could use any favorite seasoning or skip this step.

Place it on the rack of your air fryer, breast side down. and cook at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes. At the end of the 45 minutes turn it breast side up and cook for an additional 15 minutes. That’s it. No basting needed. Just look at this chicken!

Air Fryer Roast Chicken

Air Fryer Roast Chicken

Air Fryer Roast Chicken

Air Fryer Roast Chicken

It was delicious and easy.

Air Fryer Roast Chicken

Air Fryer Roast Chicken

The skin was crisp and the meat tender.

Most of my time lately has been taken up by caring for our new puppy, Shanna. Last weekend we dog-sat our friend’s corgis while they attended a wedding. Air fryer roast chicken and a salad was about all I could manage.

Casey, Quinn, Shanna with friends

Casey, Quinn, Shanna with friends

It was a wild and fun weekend.

 

April – Even More Perfect Roast Chicken

April – Even More Perfect Roast Chicken

How would you describe the perfect roast chicken? Would you mention moist white meat, or flavorful and rich dark meat, or crackly crisp skin, or still juicy leftover white meat for sandwiches and salads the next day? Maybe your answer would be ‘and’ to all those things. You want it all.

Roasted chicken has been my signature dish for years. And I am going to make it your own as well. I have found that any form of brining will dramatically improve the flavor and moistness of any baked chicken. I commonly use two methods, a dry brine and a salted buttermilk wet brine.

Here’s the bad news, it’s almost impossible to get all things with one recipe. What are you willing to give up? The decision has to do with chicken skin vs. the moistness of the leftovers. With many methods you will get crisp skin when the chicken first comes out of the oven. But leftover chicken skin is not particularly enticing at any time.

With a dry salt brine you will get wonderfully crackly crisp skin and delicious concentrated chicken taste, just not quite as moist breast meat the next day. With a buttermilk brine your leftovers will be wonderfully moist and delicious but the chicken skin will not be quite as fabulous when just out of the oven. Don’t misunderstand, it will still be a lovely burnished brown, just not as crisp. They both result in a freshly roasted chicken deserving an A+.

The other secret to a perfectly roasted and flavorful chicken is purchasing the best possible chicken available to you. By that I mean an organic, free range chicken that is ‘air chilled’. Besides flavor, there are food safety and environmental reasons to avoid the ones chilled with other birds in a huge vat of chlorinated water. You can read more about the difference here. Although ‘air chilled’ chickens are still sprayed with a fine mist of chlorinated water in the beginning, they don’t sit in it. That liquid can account for 2 to 12% of the chicken’s weight, thus diluting their flavor. And who wants to pay for chlorinated water? It’s what you see in the bottom of the pre-packaged chickens.

Any form of brining requires some advance planning. Ideally the chicken should brine for 24 hours (I’ve left them as long as 72 hours), but at least 6 hours for the best results.

Years ago, when brining first became ‘the thing’, I would prepare a liquid wet salty brine for my turkey and chickens. It required gallons of liquid (in the case of a turkey) and an ice chest (often full of bags of ice) on the back porch. Unfortunately it also frequently resulted in a spilled liquid mess on the kitchen floor. Then I read about the Zuni Cafe method. The Zuni Cafe is a restaurant in San Francisco, famous for its roasted chicken. There is no liquid required in their recipe, just a kosher salt rub and your preferred seasoning (mine is always Herbes de Provence) and an overnight (or two or three) stay on a rack, uncovered in the fridge. Yippee! No spilled mess. I still often use this method and you can read more about it in a post from 2019 here.

Perfect Roast Chicken

The Perfect Dry Brined Roast Chicken

When it emerges from the fridge it looks like a wizened wrinkled century old chicken, don’t worry about it.

Then, a few months ago, I read about roasting a whole buttermilk brined chicken. Samin Nosrat writes about this technique in her book Salt Fat Acid Heat. Buttermilk has long been used to improve the flavor of fried chicken but I had never thought to use the method on a whole chicken. Don’t worry, there is no need to pull out that ice chest. You only need a cup or two of buttermilk and a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt. I simply mix the buttermilk and salt in a gallon zip lock bag, plop in the chicken, close up the bag, smush it around (put the bag in a bowl in case there are leaks) and place it in the fridge for a few hours to a few days. You can add seasonings if you want.

I found this brining mix at my favorite spice pervader, the Oaktown Spice Shop. It’s intended for that big liquid brine I mentioned in the beginning, but I simply add a couple of tablespoons to the buttermilk. It works great.

Smoky Brine

Smoky Brine

The skin comes out a wonderful burnished brown due to the caramelization of the sugars in the buttermilk. it’s not quite as crisp as the dry brined method but still wonderful.

Buttermilk Brined Roast Chicken

Buttermilk Brined Roast Chicken

Here’s the fantastic thing about the buttermilk brined chicken…the leftovers. “What?” you say. Well, do you know how those rotisserie chickens you get at the store are quite acceptable when warm the first day, but the leftovers are almost always dry and tasteless? The leftover buttermilk brined chicken is still moist and delicious, even two days later. Even the breast meat!

Buttermilk Brined Roast Chicken

Buttermilk Brined Roast Chicken

For a dry brine:

  • Remove the chicken from its packaging and dry with paper towels (never rinse)
  • Rub the chicken with 2 – 4 tablespoons of kosher salt, all over. Place in a small pan, on a rack, breast up, uncovered, in the fridge. You can also rub with any other seasonings you may favor at the same time as the salt…cumin, herbes de Provence, chili powder, sumac, etc.
  • Leave undisturbed for at least 6 hours but as long as 72

For a buttermilk brine:

  • Dissolve 2 – 4 tablespoons of kosher salt in 1 to 2 cups of buttermilk in a gallon plastic bag.
  • Remove the chicken from its packaging and dry with paper towels (never rinse)
  • Place the chicken in the plastic bag and squeeze to remove as much air as possible. Squish the liquid around the chicken.
  • Please inside a bowl, or in a second bag to catch any leaks, and leave in the fridge for at least 6 hours, up to 48. You can turn the bag when you think about it but it isn’t entirely necessary.

For both:

  1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F (218 degrees C)
  2. Line your roasting pan with foil to catch spills and oil a rack on which to place the chicken.
  3. Spray or rub the chicken with a bit of olive oil. There is not need to clean off the salt or buttermilk.
  4. Place the chicken, breast side down, on the rack and roast for 30 minutes.
  5. After 30 minutes turn the chicken breast side up, continue to roast for another 30-40 minutes until a leg moves easily in the socket and juices run clear when pierced with a small knife in the thickest part of the thigh.
  6. Remove from the oven and let the chicken rest for at least 10 minutes before carving.

That’s all.

I’ve also cooked brined chickens (both ways) on the BBQ using the beer can method, and in the oven. You don’t need to use beer in that can. Wine works, juice works, also plain water.

You can read more about Beer Can Roast Chicken here with Middle Eastern Flavors, and Beer Can Roast Chicken with Italian Flavors on the BBQ by clicking on the links. When cooking chicken on the BBQ, or in the oven, I often  make two because the leftovers give me additional meals for the week ahead. I recommend you do the same.

Do you have a signature, tried and true meal that you can whip out with your eyes closed?

It’s Fiesta time! By that I mean Fiesta Friday, this week #376. Come on over and join the party. Angie hosts and this week’s co-host is Jhuls @ The Not So Creative Cook

Fiesta Friday is a virtual (isn’t everything these days) collection of posts from a talented collection of bloggers. You will find tips for home maintenance, weddings, food, crafts and occasionally travel. I am taking this one over to share with the group.

June – Perfect Roast Chicken

June – Perfect Roast Chicken

In her classic book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (vol. 1), Julia Child states “You can always judge the quality of a cook or restaurant by roast chicken.” Roasting a chicken is certainly an important skill to master. Your own home cooked roast chicken will be miles better than any supermarket or deli chicken.

Julia’s method results in an excellent roast chicken. However it requires turning the chicken 4 times and basting every 10 minutes. Just reading the directions can be off putting. My own method doesn’t require any basting at all and only 1 turn. It results in crisp skin and juicy meat. I don’t truss because tying the legs close to the breast results in undercooked thigh or overcooked breast meat.

Here is the trick. I take advantage of the newest information on brining, and borrow a technique often used when roasting duck. I pre-salt the chicken and let it sit in the fridge (uncovered and breast up) for several hours or overnight. That’s the only preplanning that is required.

The perfect roast chicken starts with the quality of the chicken. Buy the best you can afford, preferably free range organic and air chilled. Water bath chilling results in the bird absorbing a lot of that soaking water. I also prefer the air chilled for food safety reasons, dozens of birds are not sitting in a vat of water. If one of the birds is contaminated it increases the chances that all will be contaminated as well.

The Perfect Roast Chicken

These are general directions.

Adjust the cooking time according to the weight of your chicken. I find it is done when the leg moves easily in the socket when jiggled. For a 4-5 pound chicken that will be somewhere between 50 and 70 minutes. There will be some personal preference determining the time. I don’t mind if the white meat has a very slight pink tinge, you may want to cook your own longer. Your oven temperature will also play a part. My oven runs hot, your own may run cool. It’s best to know those things, check your own with an oven thermometer. They are cheap and it will save you a lot of grief in the long run.

You can use an instant read thermometer for more precise measurements of doneness. Insert it into the thickest part of the thigh without hitting the bone. The FDA recommends cooking chicken to an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. I take mine out just before it reaches that temperature. The bird will continue to cook with the residual heat after it comes out of the oven. Allow it to sit on your carving board or platter for 15 minutes, that allows the juices to settle back into the meat.

Salted Chicken on a Rack Ready for the Fridge

Salted Chicken Ready for the Fridge

So here we go…

There are two methods for brining a bird. The first, and older method, is to submerge it in a salt water solution. The second is a dry brine, simply rub the chicken inside and out with a generous amount of kosher salt. I don’t use method the first method anymore, I am not partial to a vat of salty water taking up space in my fridge (a spill will create a big mess…I’ve been there). In addition, a water chilled bird is what I am trying to get away from. I want to intensify flavors, not dilute them.

Dry brining intensifies flavors and will give you crisp skin. I use kosher salt because it doesn’t contain any additives and has a clean flavor.

Remove the chicken from its wrapping and dry it with paper towels. The latest food safety recommendations are to not rinse it. Rub it generously with kosher salt, both inside and out. Put it on a rack in baking dish, breast side up, and place it in the fridge for at least an hour. If you have 24 hours you will be amazed at the result. Don’t go longer than 24 unless you are brining a turkey.

Take the chicken out of the fridge while you preheat your oven to 425 degrees F (218 degrees C). I don’t use the convection fan. Rub your chicken with olive oil and any flavorings you may want (I don’t worry about the salt). I have used my confit lemon oil and lemon slices with herbs to Provence (the aroma as it roasts is incredible), paprika, chili powder, roasted fennel spice, zatar, fresh herbs, etc. You can let your imagination run wild. But you will find this chicken is delicious with only a simple coating of olive oil.

Poke a few holes in a whole lemon and place that inside the chicken. You could also add a few sprigs of whatever fresh herb you have handy. The lemon adds additional flavor. You could even use an orange or a couple of limes (especially nice if you are giving the chicken a Mexican vibe).

Line your roasting pan with foil to make clean up easier. Rub a rack (V shaped if you have one) with oil and place the chicken breast down on the rack. Once your oven has reached 425 degrees F, place the chicken in the middle of the oven and roast for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, remove it from the oven and turn it breast side up, roast for an additional 25 minutes or until done.

Let the chicken rest for 15 minutes before carving.

Perfect Roast Chicken

Perfect Roast Chicken

Look at how moist and juicy! And the skin is super crisp.

I often serve the chicken with a simple salad, I pour some of those chicken juices over the salad as a dressing with an additional squeeze of lemon juice. The fresh salad below had sliced peaches and red onion as well as some avocado. The combination was delightful.

Perfect Roast Chicken

Perfect Roast Chicken Thigh

Perfect Roast Chicken

I’m taking this to Fiesta Friday to share with Angie and the gang. It’s Fiesta #279 and I am a co-host along with Jenny from Apply to Face Blog.

Click on the links to join the party or check out all the blogs about food, the garden, and crafts. You can also add your own link.

Thank you so much for visiting and I would love to hear your comments.