First Attempt at #14: Learn to roast a chicken

NEW YORK, New York

At $2.29 per pound at the closest grocer, whole chickens are the cheapest game in town right now. So it seemed like a good time to start learning how to roast a chicken and make some more headway on my 1001/101 list.

Why roast a whole chicken? For some reason, it intimidates me. I can rock a holiday turkey without thinking twice about it thanks to that marvel known as the electronic meat thermometer. But chickens seemed somehow quirkier and more difficult to do really well. It's easy to make a mediocre roast chicken; harder to do a truly delicious and memorable bird.

It also seemed like the perfect dish both for bachelorettes like myself and for dinner parties. As a single girl, you roast one chicken and come out with cooked meat at the ready for the remainder of the week to make curry, top salads, pack a picnic, and so on. For a dinner party, it feeds several people, scents the kitchen divinely, and makes a good impression when carried to the table on a serving plate surrounded by roast potatoes and brussels sprouts. Plus, you can make stock from the carcass.

But first, a little clarification. When I say, "Learn to roast a chicken," I don't mean to just throw a chicken in the oven and be done with it. I mean, roast enough chickens to determine the right combination of heat, flavor and time to create a juicy, flavorsome bird with a nice crispy skin that works every single time and can be done off the top of my head. There are so many possible suggestions for temperature settings on the web! So many ideas for rubs, pastes, stuffings, and so on! Where does a girl start?

In the spirit of creative dining for one, she starts with whatever is about to go off in the fridge: in this case, scallions. I hacked them up into 1.5 inch pieces, coarsely chopped two cloves of garlic and cut two lemons into eighths. After prepping my chicken (wash, pat dry with paper towels, don't forget to remove the giblets) and settling it in the pan, I stuffed it with a handful of the scallions, garlic and lemons, and scattered the rest around the chicken. A generous sprinkle of herbes de provence, a light coating of olive oil on the skin, a squeeze of lemon, and in it went.

Since I'm well-practiced in roasting turkeys, I decided to take my cues from that process. First I preheated the oven to 400, put the bird in, then turned it down to 350. This allows the skin to get a little crispy and brown without requiring that you actually brown the bird in a skillet before heaving it into the pan. Then, just baste occasionally with pan juices and roast until the juices run clear, which took a little more than an hour. I then let it sit for about 15 minutes for the juices to redistribute.

It turned out pretty well. Toothsome and juicy, cooked perfectly throughout. But it wasn't as flavorful as I would have hoped, and the skin wasn't as brown or crispy as I would have liked. How to fix this? For crispier skin, next time I'll try leaving the oven at 400 for 10-15 minutes before turning it down, or perhaps leaving at 400 throughout, which some recipes advocated. For more flavor, I'll put cloves of garlic and whatever herbs under the skin on top of the meat, same as for a turkey. But right now, I have a lovely large foil package of roasted chicken in my fridge, which is extremely satisfying considering I did it on my own and for the first time.

If anyone has particular suggestions for combinations of flavors and cooking methods that work well, I'd love to hear them!