Simply delicious … but so tricky to perfect

Roast chicken is pure pleasure, and the perfect bird a cook’s true challenge.

By Elisa Ludwig

For The Inquirer

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There is little debate about the enduring appeal of the humble roast chicken. It's the food you long for when you're away from home, but it can be found across cultures, from Asia to Europe to the Middle East. It's the magical dinner your grandmother coaxed out of the oven - homeyness on a platter with a few melting celery stalks and carrots. Meanwhile, in the Hamptons, it's what food maven Ina Garten lovingly makes every Friday night for her husband, Jeffrey.

Roast chicken is snob-proof, tempting Boston Market patrons and the foodiest of the foodies with its familiar, buttery smell. "Roasted chicken is one of my favorite things in the world," says David Katz, chef/owner of Philadelphia's Meme.

What remains a matter of debate is the best way to prepare it. For a staple of Sunday-night eating, roast chicken remains a surprisingly difficult dish to master. And as with enlightenment, many paths seem to lead to the same destination.

A comparison of any three recipes reveals a host of distinctions. Should the bird be flipped? Should the temperature start high and go low, or start low and go high? Should the bird be trussed or left fancy-free? Buttered or oiled? Bed of vegetables or rack? What should be simple becomes a series of small but potentially critical decisions.

Of paramount importance is the quality of the bird. While serious home cooks and professional chefs advise against using factory-farmed chicken, ordinary folks can't source a prized French bluefoot chicken or, the darling of local chefs, the Giannone chicken from Quebec, favored for its air-chilled processing and its unique consistency among natural chickens. "I'm not a hippie about most food, but in this case I always choose a white chicken that's free-range, no antibiotics, no hormones. The Giannone has great flavor, but you could also use Bell & Evans," says Katz.

Meritage chef Anne Coll, who also favors the Giannone chicken in the restaurant kitchen, follows a similar rule of thumb. "Anything you could get from a local farmstand or at Whole Foods would work well at home. Natural chickens are just sweeter. It makes a difference."

In his book, Roast Chicken and Other Stories, British chef and food writer Simon Hopkinson asserts that while a poulet de Bresse is ideal, technique trumps ingredients and "a good cook can produce a good dish from any old scrawnbag of a chook." (Hopkinson's trusty recipe involves an obscene amount of butter, a lemon in the cavity and some periodic basting. The result is, indeed, a juicy, very fragrant chook.)

Which leads us to the matter of technique. If the goal is to get a crispy skin all around, there are some easy rules to follow. Chickens that sit on vegetables or in their own juice will not be crisped on the underside - unless they are turned midway through. Using a rack and a higher temperature (400 degrees or above, or if you're lucky, a convection oven) will help along the crisping, as will letting the chicken sit unwrapped in the fridge to dry out a bit before roasting. Finally, if the cook leans toward basting, basting should be done early in the process, leaving the chicken alone to crisp during the final third of cooking time.

My civilian friend Joe, who makes a superior chicken with a very crispy skin, observes three principles: (1) Loosen the skin from the breast and thigh. (2) Generously rub melted butter mixed with desired herbs and seasonings under the skin. (3) Situate bird in the oven with legs in first.

An age-old problem is managing the roast so the breast, which cooks quickly and dries out, is juicy and the legs and thighs, which are last to finish, are done. Trussing, says James chef/owner Jim Burke, will help with this. "It doesn't solve the problem that the breast will take longer, but it will keep the breast moist," he says. Burke, whose wife calls him "Chicken King," prefers to roast the breast and legs separately.

From there, a chef's choices are a question of personal style - and, perhaps, ambition. Done right, early salting or brining can deliver a more flavorful and juicier product. The two-day-salted roast chicken that Judy Rodgers serves in her San Francisco restaurant Zuni Cafe is the stuff of poultry-lovers' legend.

"With a brine you get a nice aroma and flavor and you can pretty much cook the chicken forever and it won't be too dry," says Coll. At Meritage, she uses an Asian-spiced brine with star anise, rice wine, and ginger. The added step improves the moistness of the breast, infuses it with a delicate, almost floral flavor, and eliminates the need for any fuss once the chicken goes in the oven.

Daniel Stern of MidAtlantic and R2L goes a few steps further and stuffs the bird with mirepoix, then brines it in a mixture of white wine, garlic, onion, bay leaf, mustard seed, and black peppercorns. Stern also believes in butter - the more the better - and basting multiple times during roasting to achieve a caramel-colored tan. "For me it was a matter of trial and error, finding the flavors that worked," Stern says.

At Meme, space restrictions in his kitchen have led Katz to a baroque method whereby he cooks the breasts sous vide with foie gras, pan-roasts the legs separately, and, when a diner calls in an order, puts them both into the oven for a final crisping. At home, though, Katz is an avid practitioner of the uncomplicated chicken: olive oil, fresh thyme leaves, coarse salt and pepper, plus a rack for the chicken to sit on.

Though in his earlier cookbook Bouchon the famed chef Thomas Keller advocated for a similarly minimal chicken, he takes it up a notch in his latest cookbook, Ad Hoc. The bird gets trussed (he even goes so far as to provide a pictorial with instructions), stuffed with garlic and thyme, rubbed with oil and salt and pepper, then roasted atop a colorful bed of root vegetables - a few pats of butter left to melt over the breast. Keller suggests massaging the salt in the cavity and using a cast-iron skillet for the best results. It is, also, a pretty great chook.