The Plight of A Poultry Trick

Thirteen ways of looking at a chicken

Dear Tamar:

I spent $42 on a whole chicken at the farmer’s market, and spatchcocked it and salted it, leaving it in the fridge overnight to chill. The next day I roasted it, and boy was it a disappointment! It wasn’t dry, but it was kind of stringy and bland and tough. I credit the blandness to me only salting the skin, and not the meat. I assume the toughness was due to the chicken having actually used its legs during its lifetime. I’d like to continue to support my local farmers and sustainably raised meat—but not by sacrificing taste! How can I make these chickens more delectable?

-A Poultry Trick

Dear Poultry Trick:

I kept starting to answer, then finding myself stuttering like an old engine, struggling for enough purchase to get going. This isn’t because the topic is paltry (I know, I know) but because it’s too rich for me to easily know where to begin—or where to end.

I was saved by Wallace Stevens and a snowstorm. The snow made me moony. Wallace Stevens took the time to look at a blackbird thirteen ways, writing thirteen observations of her. Here is his thirteenth:

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

Thank you, Wallace. Thank you, blackbird. Thank you, Poultry Trick, for the form, the reminder of specificity, and the material. Here are my thirteen ways¹.

I

I know that you know that the $42 you spent still likely left the farmer with little or no profit. It’s almost impossible to imagine—we’ve seen backyard chickens: they eat scraps, they need a few feet of yard space to scrape and peck. And yet, that’s the real math. Responsible meat farmers are working against the ineluctable commodification of life, of land, of spirit. In other words, an old joke about how to recognize a Quaker can be repurposed here: A child walked into the kitchen and reported to her father: There’s a sustainable chicken farmer out back in the river. The father asked: How do you know it’s a sustainable chicken farmer? The child replied: Because she’s swimming upstream.

II

You wrote “spatchcocked” and “salted.” You wrote it thus for accurate reporting, i.e.; you spatchcocked and salted the day before roasting. But I want to make sure the purposes of the actions are separate and clear.

A chicken’s breast does little work during its life. Its meat is pale and unlined with musculature and collagen. The reverse is true of the legs and thighs. By spatchcocking—removing a bird’s backbone and flattening it out—you’re exposing the legs and thighs to more direct heat; by insulating the breast, you’re protect it, getting closer to single piece of meat whose very different parts might cook uniformly.

Salting is for flavor. Osmosis means salt is ferried into the meat, water is ferried out. Salt won’t make it through skin into the meat. Never salt only the skin. I understand trying it. I do questionable kitchen experiments all the time—ones I basically know won’t work, because: Who Knows? Now we both know. Salt meat completely, in and out. For the record, you can just salt the heck out of the chicken whole and spatchcock it tomorrow just before cooking, if you like. I do this because I’m lazy. I can decide I don’t want to bother spatchcocking and still cook a perfectly seasoned chicken.

III

A tale that may never have been told: when I cooked at Chez Panisse, our egg farmer began raising meat birds. The birds were Freedom Rangers. I never saw one without imagining it saluting to a bugle reveille.

Try as we might, none of us could get the chicken legs and thighs to be anything but flavorful rubber. A chef decided we should confit all chicken legs and thighs. For months, we butchered and salted, then the following day, slow-cooked the leg quarters in duck fat. It solved the problem. Every chicken dish ordered for months was confited before being roasted or grilled. I put a recipe for chicken confit in my first book because it is such a reliable preparation, and especially good for very muscular, slow-growing, active chickens. I wonder what breed your farmer is raising. If it is a very athletic type, consider salting and confiting the legs—olive oil does a fine job. Two added benefits: these are very rich, so browning one quarter and splitting between two plates, alongside roasted potatoes and a bitter greens salad, is entirely reasonable; and they last for weeks and weeks.

IV

As Sun Tzu said: Divide and conquer. Per the above re: the variation in types of meat on a chicken, there’s an argument to be made that cooking it all at once is a fool’s errand. You wouldn’t cook fresh and dried beans in one pot. You wouldn’t cook short ribs and filet mignon in one pan. Breast meat is quick cooking meat. It can be cooked with direct, high heat, then immediately served. Legs and thighs are slow cooking meat. They take longer and benefit from longer, slower cooking in general. (See: confiting tough leg quarters, above.) To divide and conquer: Butcher the chicken. Night one: cook breasts, on the bone or off, for dinner. Option: off the bone, two chicken breasts can be cut into several pieces, hammered thin, and turned into enough chicken Milanese for a family of four. Night two: Cook legs and thighs. Option: slow-cook them with tomato and wine and olives, then remove the meat and serve it as chicken ragu for short pasta. Night three: The wings and carcass will become broth, which you can use in soup. Leftover chicken Milanese makes a great lunch-time sandwich. Leftover pasta with ragu can become a frittata—another lunch. Divided and conquered.

V

The exceptions to the above are methods of cooking that use low heat. Boiling a whole chicken—for which one does not boil a chicken, but rather cooks a whole salted chicken at well below a boil until all the meat is perfectly tender—works beautifully for all the different parts and types. As long as the water temperature is below a boil—its surface should be still, save for an occasional hiccup—the entire bird will cook to tender in somewhere over an hour and up to nearly two, depending on the temperature and the chicken. You will also have made a light stock, which can be reinforced once the meat is eaten off its bones.

You can roast a chicken at low heat to a similar end. It takes time and patience, but after a couple of hours at 275, all the parts of a whole chicken roasted low and slow will have managed to remain in line. In either method, start high—the pot at a boil, the oven at 400—then lower the heat.

VI

I’d never tasted my friend Samin’s buttermilk-brined roast chicken. I’m just too lazy and have too crowded a fridge for brining. Last Friday night, my mother made it, and the chicken was wonderful in every way. Brine makes up for most infelicities, especially if the brine is buttermilk and salt.

VII

Nothing will make $42 go further than cutting up and using some of the meat in a sauce or curry or stir fry or soup—or any other dish founded on stretching. What about Sichuan Strange Flavor Chicken? Or Big Plate Chicken? Or Chicken Skewers? Or another recipe where other ingredients make up some of the main dish’s bulk?

VIII

I always liked fried chicken, because I’m human. But I loved it best when I was assigned an article on older breeds of chicken—probably like the one you bought. I cooked a slew of breeds, in different ways. For the oldest, darkest, most muscular variety, I fried it, at low temperature, in freshly rendered lard. I was transported. To a hot night somewhere distant with high grass. The taste was stilling.

IX

Remove leftover chicken from its bones. Do this before putting leftovers away, so everything is in the easiest possible shape for tomorrow’s self to deal with. Do it no matter how little is left. The meat from a thigh, removed from the bone, is enough for a family’s meal of chicken congee—there will also be sliced scallions, chopped peanuts, pickled vegetables, etc.

X

Though I’m happy when it is, chicken salad doesn’t have to be mayonnaise and celery. There may be sauce left from making Strange Flavor Chicken (above.) Combine cold shredded chicken with that, add sliced scallions, put it on hot rice, you will be singing psalms. Or combine cold shredded chicken with preserved lemon and tahini, thinned with water. Or with diced pickles, spicy mustard, and a little heavy cream. Or make it into larb gai. Or, or, or.

XI

Start the stock tonight. Put the carcass and bones in a pot, cover with water, and put it on the stove. Add a bit of carrot, a branch of fennel, some parsley stems, a bay leaf. Bring it to a boil. If it’s time to go to bed, turn it off, and reboil then simmer it tomorrow. But get it started now, so you know it’ll get done.

XII

Everyone’s always going on about “beef stew” and “chicken soup.” Do you see what I’m getting at? Chicken stew! Let’s burn it down.

XIII

Dear cook

Like the observer of the blackbird

I wrote this mid-midwinter

It is long despite the day being short

And I spent all of it thinking about your chicken.

There was a SNAFU with the link to submit questions last week. It’s been fixed! Please..

1. My friend, Samin Nosrat, whom I mention above, also used Stevens’s Thirteen Ways to look at her own chicken in her book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat—an impulse I respect.