Roasted Chicken

Vertical roaster

A really nice home cooked roast chicken is a beautiful thing, but it's hard to argue with the fully cooked, rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. Less hassle, SO convenient, but you don't get that roast chicken smell in your kitchen, like I do- and is it really fresh? You can do better. Let me introduce you to the vertical roaster. It's cheap, low tech and simple to use. It's job is simple, but crucial. It holds the bird up so it will crisp all the sides. The extra fat drips into the pan, preventing the dreaded sogginess. There's no basting, no fussiness and it produces perfect chicken every time, okay, maybe not for everybody, there is some monitoring to do, just didn't want to scare you off. We got our vertical roaster years ago at Linens and Things, you can probably get one at Bed, Bath and Beyond or an overpriced one at Williams Sonoma, probably don't have them at Target, but I could be wrong. I think it was $10.

The formula is simple, let your chicken come up to room temperature, set it on the counter for about an hour, rinse and pat dry with some paper towels. Pre-heat your oven to 440*. Put the chicken on the vertical roaster, the picture will make this clear.

Prepped, prior to cooking

To prep the chicken, tie the wings to the rest of the chicken with twine, if it didn't come that way. Lightly coat the chicken with soy sauce (we use the sweet variety, but light will do) and then any oil you prefer. Here's where the power of choice comes in, you can put on any spices you like for flavor. The oil is important as it helps the stuff to stick and browns the skin. On this one, chef sprinkled kanchai powder (otherwise galanga or lemongrass are in the same vein as the kanchai) and lightly dusted the chicken with white pepper and salt.

Done!

Here's the formula: you cook the chicken 10 minutes per pound, plus 10-15 minutes. When considering if it's done, the skin should be very browned, almost blackened, you'll know it when you see it. This is important: take the chicken out of the oven and let it sit for 10-15 minutes before you cut into it. Note from the Alphachef: You want to let it sit because when you cook any type of meat the juice moves towards the outside of the meat. If you immediately cut into it you'll lose all the juice and have dry meat.  By letting the meat sit the juices move back into the center of the flesh and results in a juicer piece of meat.

Still tempted by the grocery store chicken? This is better, I swear it. And you'll use the leftovers. To prove it I'll post a recipe tomorrow with a leftover chicken recipe-  you won't even recognize the bird. 

The finished product! We douse it in a Thai Sweet Chili Sauce for chicken (it's really called that). It should be in most grocery stores in the Asian section, otherwise pick it up when you go to United Noodle for the ingredients to the Szechuan Noodles you were planning on making. My Alphachef is an overachiever and put cilantro on top, it was worth it and highly recommended.