So here's an unconventional but surprisingly easy way of doing an ersatz rotisserie chicken
in a home oven. It gets you a chicken with a really nice crispy skin, but more significantly,
it gets you these potatoes that you cook underneath the hanging chicken. They're basically fried
in chicken fat.
I'll start with a 4-5 pound chicken. Any bigger than that and the potatoes might be burned
by the time the chicken is cooked. And hey, let's do another one, because this is a very
efficient method for doing multiple chickens at once if you're feeding a crowd.
First a ton of salt goes on the tops. It should feel like too much, because a chicken is a
big thing with a lot of mass relative to its surface area. Then I'll do garlic powder and
paprika — those are the classic grocery store rotisserie chicken spices, in the U.S.,
at least. Also some black pepper, and I'll smush that all around and then flip them over
and do the exact same thing to the other side.
If a lot of seasoning falls onto the pan underneath, that's just fine, because that's where the
potatoes are going eventually. I'll stick half a lemon inside each one, and you could
absolutely roast these right now. But, I'm gonna stick them uncovered into the fridge
for a day or two to dry cure. The bottoms are up on a rack, so there'll be air circulation
all around, and the skin will dry out, which will make it crispy. Here's how it will look
after a day. Unlike traditional seasoning, curing like this actually does season the
interior of the meat. The salt draws moisture to the surface, it dissolves into that moisture
which in turn is slowly reabsorbed into the meat.
You just season it, throw it in the fridge uncovered and forget about it for a day. You'll
be amazed how much that meat improves.
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Now here's the chickens 24 hours later. The skin is looking a little leathery, and that
os good. Though again, that dry curing phase is totally optional. Time to tie these things
up. You need maybe three feet, or a meter of butcher's twine for each chicken. Step
one is to nestle the middle of the string underneath the chicken along its spine. Then
send one end of that string up along the length of the breast, and I'm seating it right in
that natural depression over the keel bone.
Right over the bird's rear end there I'm gonna wrap the two ends of string around each other,
and then I'm gonna tie the two legs together. It's more secure if you can get one knee joint
laid on top of the other like that.
Alright, I'll show you that again. I'm neither a butcher nor a Boy Scout — I'm terrible
with knots, so if I can do this, you can too. Middle of the string is underneath the bird
along its back bone and then, whoops, I'm in your way.
Alright, then you gotta just wind the two ends around each other once or twice, just
like that. Then use the excess to tie the legs together, ideally with one knee kinda
locked over the other. I'm using a butcher's knot to tie them off, but anything secure
is fine.
OK, now to hang the chickens from your oven racks, you're gonna need some large metal
S-hooks. I'm sure you can buy something from a hardware store, but I bent these out of
a wire coat hanger. You just hook that through the chicken's tied legs. And there you go,
hanging chicken.
I tried to do this once by simply tying the legs together. I did send that supporting
string all the way down around the breast. And when the chicken was almost done, the
dark meat went soft and the bird literally fell out of its own hip joints. So yeah, you
need the string to wrap all the way around. You also need to make sure you hook the chicken
between its legs, and not on this other string suspended over the cavity. That's not strong
enough, it will break in the oven, and your chicken will fall. The legs are stronger.
Alright, let's prep the oven. If you have three racks, take one of them out and just
stash it somewhere. Then put one rack all the way in the top position, and one all the
way in the bottom position. Heat wise, I use my convection roast setting at 425 Fahrenheit,
that's like 220 C. But really, every oven is different, and I think you're gonna have
to experiment a bit. Certainly if ever there was a time to use convection, now is it.
Alright, now, potatoes. I've got about three pounds, or a kilo and a half of floury baking
potatoes. Russets. And I think Russet skins are gross unless they get exclusively dry
heat, so I will peel these. I think any potato would be fine for this as long as they're
big enough that you can cut big chunks out of them. But mealy potatoes like these seem
to be better at absorbing all the chicken goodness.
I've got some dirt on those, so I'll wash them off. And now we're gonna cut them into
really thick slices, like an inch and a half, or four centimeters. They're going a shrink
a ton while cooking, and if you have any pieces that are two small, like that one, you might
as well just throw them away, because they're just gonna burn.
Now, I'll move those chickens off the rack. This is one of those situations where it really
helps to have a probe thermometer that's on an oven-safe cable. That way we can just plunge
it into the thickest part of the breast right now, and not when it's hanging perilously
in a hot oven. Be careful not to hit bone. Bone gets hotter than meat. I'll oil them
up a tiny bit. This really gets you a much browner skin.
Let's get rid of that dirty rack, because underneath it we have a pre-seasoned sheet
pan on which to put our potatoes. Everything about this method is so synergistic, which
I think is really valuable for home cooking. You want to make sure the potatoes are evenly
spaced out and all lying flat in one layer.
Pan goes onto the low rack. Then we take the chicken and just hook it onto one of the bars
in the upper rack. You can see why you need a big S-hook for this. If it was little, you'd
be more likely to touch those hot racks and burn yourself doing this.
I think the legs getting pulled taught like that helps the dark meat get more heat and
cook faster, which is always the challenge when roasting chickens. The white meat is
always done before the dark meat.
Last thing is to just pour a thin layer of liquid into the pan with the potatoes. I've
got an open container of stock to use, but you could get away with water. If you don't
have some liquid in there to start with, the potatoes would probably cook faster than the
chickens, and you'd definitely get a ton of smoke in your kitchen from the drippings hitting
the bare pan surface. Alright, close her up, and then you'll want to check on this every
15 minutes or so, and shift the rack around so that all the potatoes get some direct drippage
from the chickens. I just love this method, because you'd have to put a drip pan under
the chickens anyway, so it might as well have some potatoes on it.
Halfway through cooking, half of this pan is dry, because the stock is evaporating,
which is good, but my oven is not level, which is bad, so I've rotated the pan to let the
remaining stock flow down to the other side for a little while.
And after about an hour of roasting, the internal temperature is like 162 F, or 72 C. By the
time these rest, that'll be a perfect 165 F. Be sure to use an oven mitt when you unhook
these. Those hooks are hot. I'll also take the pan of potatoes out now. You could certainly
eat those right away, but since the oven is already hot and we need to rest the chickens
for a while anyway, I like to use a stout metal spatula to scrape these up off the pan
and then flip them so that we can crisp the other side. Don't worry if they get kinda
beat up in the process. Those roughed up surfaces go beautifully crisp. I'm gonna sneak that
right onto the upper rack, so we get some nice direct heat radiating onto those surfaces.
Alright, you'll note I'm resting these chickens up on a clean rack. That's to keep the bottom
skin nice and dry and crispy.
Maybe 10 minutes later, I'm worried some of these are gonna start to burn, so out the
tray comes, and I'll let those rest alongside the chickens. Let them firm up a bit before
we scrape them off again. Alright, let's chop up a chicken. Note how crispy the skin on
the underside of the leg and thigh is. That's the one thing you don't get if you roast a
chicken down in a pan, which is my normal method.
I usually just like to tear off the whole leg quarter, then lop off the entire breast.
Cut the leg off of the thigh, and then slice up the breast. Little mixture of light and
dark meat on the plate, then some of those potatoes. It's basically a very crude fondant
potato we've made there, and a nice little side salad that I made while the birds were
roasting. An acidic dressing really cuts the chicken fat in the potatoes, which, by the
way, may or may not need some finishing salt at the end. It's up to you. They did get some
salt from the chicken and the stock. And yeah, that tastes like a chicken nugget.
Nice crispy skin on that chicken leg, very tasty. Again, dry-brining is not necessary,
but because we can't make gravy or pan sauce when we do this, it helps to have the meat
somewhat flavored on the inside. I know it seems like an elaborate method, but honestly
this is a very simple, very efficient home-cooked meal, and those chicken-flavored potatoes
are just bonkers — well-worth a few feet of string. Don't forget to try saving money
with Digit. Link is in the description.
And save your chickens by hooking them between their legs. If you hook through just through
the string, it's gonna break, not that I would know that from experience.