So I discovered that my local Costco sells 2 whole chickens that are about 4 lbs each for 89 cents/lb. This is a great price to me and solves several issues in our kitchen: 1) a husband whose preferred meat is chicken and only the breasts 2) a wife (me) who prefers thighs if I'm going to eat chicken and 3) bones for soup stock. And I'll mention the 89 cents/lb again because well short of moving to eggs, tofu, and beans, none of which my husband eats, I'm not sure we can secure meat much cheaper.
So I've done a number of things in the cooking of whole chicken. I started with oven roasting whole chicken the low and slow way which Alton Brown has recommended. Results were fine as in I was happy with the moistness of the meat and the flavor from various seasonings. But low and slow requires a fair amt of preplanning. Then over Christmas I watched Jacque Pepin's youtube video on deboning a chicken and decided to try that. If you are him, you can do it in 5 minutes. It took me more like 20-30. Results on the grill were actually great, but I had a hard time figuring out what was dark meat and what was white meat. Given the above parameters, this was unacceptable. And 20-30 min of prep in chicken slime was a bit much. SOO...currently I'm butterflying/spatchcocking chicken. This is way easier than deboning and way faster than the low and slow method.
All I do is take a pair of scissors and cut out the backbone of the chicken. Trim off a little fat, flip the bird over and crack the breast bone. This allows the chicken to be flattened and ensures that I can have a cooked chicken in under an hr instead of the 3 or so hours with low and slow. So it's a touch more work that just seasoning a whole chicken but cooking time is greatly reduced. It's a ton less work than deboning entirely and I can still clearly identify all the meat parts. A happy compromise in my book.
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BTW the post that I've been ruminating about for several weeks as a follow up to the last post is what we're actually doing in our year of "doing less", but writing about chicken was easier today. So that's what I wrote about.
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Well on the chicken roasting topic, our favorite recipe is to stuff the whole chicken with lemon halves and garlic, rub the outside down with oil or butter, and bake it on 475 for an hour. Depending on size you might have to cook as long as 90 minutes, but never longer. Comes out great! And doesn't take too long.
Love your blog by the way!
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