You may ask, do I really have to brine my chicken?
No, you don't.
It is a wonderful way to season the chicken thoroughly
with that wonderful flavor.
Again, you want to have it in the brine.
This is a 10% salt solution, so, you
want to have it in the brine for enough period of time
that that salt and the other flavors that we have in here--
which is a little bit of honey, of course some thyme,
some lemon, some bay leaf, some parsley, some
peppercorns-- you want to have enough time for those flavors
that are in the brine, as well as our salt,
to actually penetrate the skin of the chicken
and penetrate the flesh of the chicken.
Remember, it's brining inside and out.
Now, I know some people like to put herbs and lemons
and things inside their chicken, but, because we brined it,
you don't have to.
Alright, so, there's our chicken.
One of the challenges in roasting any bird
is the amount of time it takes to cook legs as opposed
to breasts.
And, as anybody who's ever had a great roasted chicken
knows that the breast should be nice and juicy
and the legs should be cooked through.
We don't want to see any blood, or, if we do,
just a minor amount of pink around that leg joint
where that leg joint meets the thigh.
Of course, in brining, we have introduced moisture.
And this is a little bit of a contradiction
from what we talked about early when
we didn't want to buy chickens that
were water-cooled, but air-cooled because we didn't
want to introduce moisture.
In this case, we've introduced a brine,
we've introduced flavor to it.
We've helped to bring some more moisture to the breast,
so the cooking of the breast and the legs
will almost be identical.
One thing that I've learned about a chicken
because I enjoy them so much is I
can tolerate a little bit overdoneness on the breast
as long as the breast remains moist.
And that breast remaining moist through the brining
is part of that result. Alright so, we're
going to truss our chicken.
A lot of moisture-- so, I'm just going
to go ahead and put my towel underneath there so that helps.
And it's a very easy process.
We're going to take a piece of butcher's twine,
snuggle it underneath what is the pope's nose right there.
We're going to bring it over the two leg joints there.
So, you see we have a cross right there.
And then we're going to take it and slide it
underneath the leg, so we've created a figure eight
if you can see that.
We're going to snuggle that right underneath the breast
and pull back.
Pull this way across and pull back at the same time.
Now I'm pulling my breast skin down with my thumbs,
because I want to make sure I make that breast skin taut,
wrapping my string through where they cut the neck.
The neck is right here.
And you can see just a little remnant of where the neck was.
That's going to hold that string in place.
And then I'm going to do that wonderful slip knot that I use.
And then just go ahead and tie it tightly there.
There we have our trussed, brined, 2 1/2,
3-pound roasting chicken.
And then we're going to go ahead and put
that in our refrigerator for at least two days, possibly three.
We have the advantage in our restaurants
to have a lot of air movement in our refrigerators,
because we have fans.
And we actually add fans to our walk-ins
as well so that we can increase the velocity of air that
goes around our chickens.
Chickens being a very special dish at Bouchon,
we want to make sure that we always
have as perfect a roasted chicken as possible.
And air drying it results in having this beautiful, almost
lacquered, crispy skin.
What we all really enjoy in a roasted chicken
is the texture of the skin.
That's why I talked about earlier the contrasting
textures and flavors from the different parts
of the chicken-- from the pope's nose to the thighs to the legs
to the wings to the breast, even the oysters--
the little oysters that are part of the connection
between the back and the leg which are just so wonderful.
There's all these little treasures to find on a chicken
and to be able to enjoy on that chicken.
So, air drying it is really important.
Let me just get this one back again.
The chicken that was just out of brine, which we're getting
ready to dry, and the chicken which has
been drying for three days--
quite a difference in that.
So, we're just going to then brush it
with a little bit of clarified butter.
That fat's going to help crisp up that skin a little bit,
but it's also going to help us season it with our salt.
So, the salt's going to actually adhere to the fat
or, in this case, the butter that's on the chicken.
Can you use oil?
Certainly you can use vegetable oil.
We have our oven preheated to 475 degrees.
We want to really get that intense heat on the chicken,
so that it really starts to crisp up that skin.
And then we'll turn down the heat after 15 or 20 minutes
to about 375 and finish the roasting process.
One of my favorite parts about this
is that as that salt bakes onto that skin,
that first bite of that salty skin is just so wonderful.
And there we have what I like to call our one-pot meal.