Brined Roasted Chicken for the Newbie

This is probably one of my favorite entrees to eat. I probably like it a lot more than anyone else in my family.

• Roasting chicken, 4-6 lbs.
• 1/4 cup salt
• cold water to cover
• oil or softened butter (about 1/4 cup)
• salt
• pepper

Mix the salt and the water in a container that is big enough to completely submerge the chicken. It can be glass, plastic, or metal. I usually use a soup pot, but a 2-gallon ziploc will work for most chickens. This is the brine. It can be fancier (this is a great place to put lemon slices, poultry seasoning, bay leaves, sage and thyme, sugar, brown sugar, etc., or you can skip the salt water and go to buttermilk, but it’s kind of expensive to cover a whole chicken in buttermilk, and it’s better to use parts if you’re going that direction), but it can be as simple as salt and water and it will still be tasty.

Remove anything that some butcher stuffed in the cavities of the bird in order to make it weigh more, and throw that stuff away. No, I don’t make giblet gravy or fry the livers (although that is delicious) or anything like that. Rinse the bird inside and out.  Stick it into the brine, making sure that the cavities are all filled with brine, and leave it there for 30-60 minutes. It’s only a chicken. You don’t have to leave it in there for more than an hour. (Yes, I know that a turkey has to be brined for 12-20 hours, but that is a turkey.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray the inside of your roasting pan and rack with Pam or something similar.

Remove the chicken from the brine, and discard the brine. Rinse the bird inside and out. Now pat it dry. Inside and out. (If you use a clean dishtowel, do not use it for anything else. Put it directly into the laundry.) Place the chicken on the roasting rack. Whether it’s breast-up or breast-down doesn’t actually matter, according to America’s Test Kitchen. Rub the skin all over with your choice of olive oil or butter. Salt and pepper moderately, both sides. (Because of the salt in the brine, the chicken does not need much salt, but you can go crazy with the pepper.)

Place the roasting pan, covered, in the oven and let it cook 20 minutes per pound plus 15 minutes extra. So if my chicken is around 5 pounds, I would cook it for 115 minutes. I usually uncover the bird for at least 20 minutes at the end to crisp the skin. When the internal temperature (stick a meat thermometer into either the breast or the thigh, not touching the bone) reaches 165 degrees, remove the chicken from the oven and tent it loosely with aluminum foil. (I have made the mistake of putting the lid back on the roaster instead of a foil tent, and this traps the steam in the pan and ruins the lovely crisping of the skin. It was not pretty. Heed my warning.)

Let the chicken rest for 10-15 minutes. This is an important part. Cutting the bird without letting it rest causes all the moistness to leak out immediately, and the meat is the Sahara by the time it gets to the table. Between the brining and resting, this should be a succulent bird, so don’t skip it!  While it rests, you can make gravy from the drippings. (This is a worth-while use of time, because the drippings make FABULOUS gravy.)

• drippings from the roasting pan  (if there isn’t much, you can add 1 cup of chicken broth, or however much you need to make 1/4 cup of gravy per person)
• flour
• water

Put your drippings in a smaller pan, first. It’s just easier to control. Add stock to it if you need to. I try to wind up with at least 2 cups of gravy because my kids really like gravy, and that’s at least 1 1/2 cups of juice.  Bring it to a boil. While it’s coming to a boil, whisk together 1/3 cup flour with 1/2 to 2/3 cup cold water. (If this mix has to wait for a while as the chicken broth gets going, it tends to settle, so give it a stir occasionally to keep the particles suspended.) Whisk the flour/water mixture into the boiling drippings very gradually, a little at a time, and whisk quickly to avoid lumps. Stop adding flour/water when it seems like it’s almost thick enough, and let it boil a minute or two. You can always add more thickener, but you’ll have to add more water if it’s too thick. You can add salt and pepper, but taste if first, because the drippings will be salty from the brine.

After rest period is over, THEN you can cut the chicken. You can look up all sorts of tutorials on how to carve a bird, and they all work. I usually take the legs and thighs off first and then carve the breast, but you can do what you want. (I also ignore the wings and the back, because tomorrow I’m going to make chicken soup.)