Dave the Cook

I'll bite. I have a number of questions, but first, can you explain this? It's counter-intuitive, isn't it?

Sounds great, tommy. The brick is for tourists. Absolutely unnecessary, and actually makes the chicken more prone to burning. You don't press on your burgers while you grill 'em, do you? Don't mash the bird.

If I spatchcock a chicken for the oven, I handle it pretty much the way Sam does. But more often, a spatchcocked chicken will go skin down on the grill, over indirect heat for about 40 minutes -- no turning. Usually I use lump charcoal, but if I have time, I'll soak a few chunks of hardwood and toss them on the hot coals, too. Close the lid and I get an semi-smoked chicken that's pretty hard to beat under any circumstances, spatchcock or no. But all this spatchcocking (and Sam's method or broiling or mine of grilling) is quite far from the utter simplicity of tj's original post and my follow up. Here's the drill: I'm on my way home, a little late, but the allure of roast chicken will not be denied. There is no time for brining, no time for spatchcocking. I call my daughter and tell her to put the pan in the oven and turn the oven on. I pick up a chicken on my way. By the time I get home, the oven and pan are hot. I don my custom-made maggiethecat apron, and I remove the chicken from the packaging. I rinse it, dry it, probe it and put it in the pan. It squeals and hisses and sizzles. Thirty minutes later, we have roast chicken. How easy can you get? Where is there a better convergence of cost, effort and taste? It cost me three bucks, and took me five minutes, tops. I have not turned, and I have not basted. I have not spatchcocked. (Six times I got to say spatchcock [ooh, that's seven]. Thank you, tommy.)

That's funny -- I do the same thing. Yeah, more veggies all around, I think. I've been thinking about the game component. It's almost 400 miles from my place to Varmint's. I'll bet that on the way, I can scrape enough opossum and coon off the road to give us what we need.

So what's your advice on the rabbit? Regaradles of price, do you think it adds much to the dish -- aside from being able to say, "Oh yeah, that's rabbit in there"? Good idea on the gizzards; I wish I'd thought of that. And I had planned on more livers the next time around.

The other thing you've got going for you is that short ribs are pretty tough -- full of connective tissue. There's some acid in the wine, but I'm thinking you're going to be fine, unless they've added some kind of tenderizer like papain.

I was waiting until I could post pictures, but I'll do that later. Mine was thicker, mostly because of longer cooking, I think. Some notes: - I completely understand the impulse to add the additional seasoning. It wasn't overpoweringly sweet, but it was unbalanced. I think black pepper, a touch of lemon and some Tabasco or Worcestershire would restore it, and, unlike the sriacha (bless your heart), would be entirely Southern. I now understand why these are common ingredients. - On one hand I agree about the chicken drying out, but I don't think the answer is to substitute more rabbit. The bunny remained moist, but didn't add much gaminess to the pot. I'm thinking that using all dark chicken meat would fix the moisture problem, and we'd save some on the expense of M. Lapin ($3.50/lb -- or did you get it cheaper, Dean?). As for gaminess, Richard (and others) might be right, but I'm not sure it's a realistic ingredient for us, given that we'll have to make about ten times this recipe. Duck, maybe? Or some red meat? I'm open to suggestions. I suggested tossing a lamb shank in the pot, but Varmint vetoed it. - I thought it needed more tomatoes, for acid, color and richness. - Using vegetable stock did add depth, and it certainly made a darker brew (you'll see when I post the pix). The veggie stock had a lot of mushrooms in it, and while there was no noticeable mushroom flavor in the VD Stew, it did have a non-specific meatiness that was missing in the plain version. This, I'm thinking, must be unami. I'm debating how to get this into the stew without going to the trouble of making veggie stock, because it's going to be too much trouble to make stock and stew in the same 24-hour period, not to mention consuming mass quantities of alcoholic beverages and helping to eat a whole pig. OTOH, it answers the question raised by Jaymes' mushroom-inclusive recipes.

I'm not familiar with the marinade. What's in it?

This certainly seems true for fried chicken. In James Beard's American Cookery, he points out that cookbooks didn't mention the dish at all until the 1870s. Even then, most of them made note of its origin with the phrase "negro cooks of the South."

The other thing chicken has that the cuke lacks is protein. Protein strands are normally coiled into loose balls. The salt in the brine causes the bonds holding the strands in place to loosen (this is called denaturing). The strands are now free to tangle up with each other, forming net-like configurations that trap the brine. When heat is applied, the proteins coagulate, keeping the additional moisture inside (assuming you don't overcook it).

A salt-only brine will eventually turn the meat mushy. I once left shrimp in a brine for about 30 hours (not on purpose), and they ended up a lumpy mound of grainy goo. I don't know how long it would take less fragile meats to achieve this state. A 12 to 14 pound turkey easily withstands 18 hours, and I've known people to leave pork shoulders in brine for days. On the other hand, a brine with acidic (e.g., lemon juice) or enzymatic (e.g., fresh pineapple) components will act much more rapidly to render your meat to mush. What happens eventually is that the salinity of the brine and the salinity of the meat achieve an equilibrium (the initial difference in salinity is part of what makes brining work). Once you've gotten that far, there is no reason to brine further (and for reasons stated above, good reasons not to). Unfortunately, I can't tell you what that point is, and I've never seen a table that claims to establish those points. What seems clear is that this point will vary according to 1) meat density; 2) thickness of the cut; 3) what animal it came from; and possibly 4) what part of the animal it came from (here I'm thinking that a chicken leg will brine at a different rate than a breast, due to the differences in connective tissue and myoglobin content, but this is speculation on my part). The thing is, you're just trying to flavor the meat and gain a little tenderness from denaturing the proteins. For convenience's sake, an extra hour for chicken is not going to do much harm, but why push it? And if you're roasting, you want the chicken out of the brine for a while to dry out the skin, anyway. Given sufficient time, I brine, then set the chicken on an open rack in the refrigerator for several hours. Chef Fowke, I'm looking forward to those pictures. Wolfert seems to have firgured this out on her own, and I'm envious.

You need something with high heat capacity. Given the choices, go with the All-Clad (and catch up on slkinsey's eGCI course on Understanding Stovetop Cookware). Meanwhile, you really need a cast-iron skillet. Buy it through this link, and eGullet reaps a farthing. It's the best $13 investment you'll ever make.

I wasn't jumping, dear. I was asking. Sorry.

Geez -- does that really work?? I've been doing the basic side-side-breast up thing at about 400 degrees and it still takes an hour or so. Can the chicken really be done in half an hour with no turning? I, too, was a non-believer, until I tried it. The cool thing about it is the built-in thigh compensation. The already-hot skillet gets the legs going a lot quicker than the breasts, which only roast, while the thighs are roasting and frying. This lets them get done at the same time. Note that, given more time, this is not my preferred method. there's not a lot of finesse here. But it gets you good Roast Chicken in less than an hour, including time to take off your coat and mix a Tom Collins. Here's how it works for me: I'm on my way home from work, and I'm wondering what I'll do for dinner. The words "dinner" and "roast chicken" are always within a few synapses of each other. But I used to discard the thought because roast chicken either means 1) buying a rotisserie bird at the mega-mart, or 2) "the basic side-side-breast up thing at about 400 degrees," and yes, an hour or more is correct. But this technique, which also convinced me that Bittman was worth listening to, has made roast chicken a week-night staple. All I can say is, try it. If it doesn't work for you, put it back in the oven till it's done, eat it, then report here. We'll figure out what happened. It's what we do. Well, it's what some of us do.

This is by weight, elyse?

I like Chef Fowke's method, but if you want something more "scientific," the usual formula is: 1/4 cup table salt or 3/8 cup Morton's Kosher or 1/2 cup Diamond Crystal per quart of water Note that it is the proportion of salt to water that constitutes the "recipe." It is infinitely expandable. To this you can add sugar, juice or almost any other water soluble flavoring. But the salt is indispensible -- it's what does the protein (and a good bit of the flavoring) magic, and is why it's called a brine. Use displacement to figure out how much brine you need: put your bird (or whatever) in an appropriately-sized container, fill with water to cover, then measure the water. For a 3-pound chicken, two quarts does it. As for time, 30 minutes per pound of food is a good starting point, but obviously that can vary according to shape and density. Five pounds of spare ribs will take less time than five pounds of pork shoulder, for instance, and three pounds of shrimp will go a lot faster than three pounds of boneless chicken breasts. Like any other craft, you have to use your judgement, and you can expect to get better at it the more you use the technique. (IMHO, brining should never be less than 30 minutes for anything. Shrimp will be done at that point, and don't let 'em go much longer; but a big pork butt can go all night, and then some.) And remember to refrigerate it, not so much because of bacterial growth (a brine is pretty inhospitable to bacteria, though anything already in the chicken itself presents some danger), but because brining works much better at lower temperatures.

Let me be the first to say: nice butt ya got there, Stone.

i don't allow egulleters into my home. Even if they come bearing paint brushes and pecan pie?

tommy, I think it's obvious to all of us(except you) that you need to hire elyse to repaint your kitchen cabinets.

dave, perhaps another type of experiment of conuming vs smelling should be set up for just you sorry.... i couldn't help it i'll go to my corner now Yeah. Um . . . just stay there, and um . . . think about what you've done. Yeah.

OK, I haven't set up the energy balance differential equation to examine the thermodynamics of this thing but: 1) The thigh takes the longest to cook 2) Trussing the bird decreases the surface area of the thigh/leg. How could trussing it make it cook more evenly? Please offer some scientific explanation, not heresay. If I understand the technique Chef Fowke is suggesting, it stretches the chicken lengthwise and pulls the thigh away from the body of the chicken. This would actually be more effective than just letting the chicken lie without support. That's if I understand the technique. Regardless, I'm having trouble with the geometry described in your subsequent explanation, CF -- particularly the thigh part. Is this one of those things I won't understand until I've actually done it? edit: cross-posted with the Chef. I'll wait for the photo.

Me too. Maybe one of those occasions where it's the journey, not the destination?

Yes, though I left out the gizzard, because the amount of cooking theywere going to get wouldn't have been enough to soften them. Rabbits, of course, don't have gizzards, but compared to chickens, they have huge livers!

This kind of trussing makes some sense. How do you get the legs to stay in position? Do you have to break the joints?

This thread reminds me of Mark Bittman's "Fastest Roast Chicken." Put a cast-iron pan in the oven while you're preheating to 450. Season the chicken and plop it in the pan. (I put a temperature probe in the thigh before the plopping.) Wait 30 minutes, or until the temp is 155 or so. Done. One of the best effort/result ratios to be found in cooking. Of course, if I'm comfortable and have the time, I will brine it first. And with more time and comfort, sneak some herbs under the skin. With utmost comfort and time, I spatchcock it, brine it, light the grill, infuse olive oil with lime zest, garlic and ancho powder and massage into the flesh under the thigh and breast. Skin down over an indirect fire for 40 to 45 minutes. That's still less than 15 minutes' real work. None of these (including tjaehnigen's initiating post) really requires much effort -- and given the price of chicken (even designer birds), there's not a more efficient combination of work, cost and result to be found. Plus, it gives an American a reason to say "spatchcock," a word we've for some reason stupidly discarded. spatchcock spatchcock spatchcock