Romance of the Chicken

The Perfect Roast Chicken has taken on some mystical characteristics over the years. Who can forget the Engagement Chicken, a creation of Glamour magazine? Many marriages and engagements are credited to a recipe that is suppose to produce a perfect lemony chicken. Of course, the story goes that a woman makes the engagement chicken for her partner, often a man, and he subsequently proposes. The whole story is cute. Romantic fantasies of a partner did not spur my perfect roast chicken journey. Instead, I use the Perfect Roast Chicken to test out the quality of bird sold at the stores.

I am very particular about chicken. My childhood in Nigeria eating flavorful chicken has set a benchmark for what I consider good chicken. One of the things I have found difficult to source in America is good chicken. I know it may sound crazy because every store sells chicken. But, not all chickens are equal. When I go buy chicken, I assess not just the color of the chicken but the size. Extreme sized chicken leave me feeling astounded. It just makes no sense to me.

Even after I do find chicken that looks good, there is the test taste. My Perfect Roast Chicken recipe is the way I test out if a store sells good chicken. To me, good chicken does not need more than salt to taste good when roasted. I know this may sound shocking coming from me, the girl that loves herbs and spices. The goal of the Perfect Roast Chicken test is to determine if the bird is of good quality without masking its flaws.

No matter how much herb and spices one dumps on a piece of meat, if the meat is substandard, the outcome would be substandard. This is why the Perfect Roast Chicken recipe with just salt added on the chicken is such an important test. When I roast a good bird, the meat comes out of the oven moist. After letting it rest for a few minutes, the moisture is absorbed back into the meat along with the salt. One special thing about my recipe for roast chicken is the high heat at the beginning of the roast. The 500F temperature helps to crisp up the skin. By reducing the oven back to 400F, I am able to then do a longer roast on the chicken.

The Perfect Roast Chicken is often the underpinning of my meal prep. I love to make multiple chickens at once, carve it up and store in the freezer. Since the chicken is so moist when I cook it, the dry heat does not make it inedible when I reheat it. Of course, I have a trick for heating up my chicken in the microwave oven that preserves its integrity.

The Perfect Roast Chicken recipe produces a lovely juicy chicken that is well flavored from the bone to the skin. It may seem so easy to buy a rotisserie chicken from the store. Remember though, there is something overwhelming special about know exactly what is in the food.