Issue #176: Nate's Simple Upside-Down Roast Chicken
With Enough Salt and a Hot Oven, You Can Make a Delicious Roast Chicken
There are many dishes that test kitchens across the country work tirelessly to perfect. While I appreciate their efforts and often benefit from their results, a few of their objectives seem spurious to me, nothing more than click bait. No one needs another “perfect” vinaigrette (see Issue #131) or another “best” brownie recipe (see Issue #173). These subjects have been fully explored.
The same goes for roast chicken.
True, there are a million different ways to roast a chicken. But all of the results are pretty good. And all you really need to do is find a good bird (see Issue #20)—but not even, you’ll see—season it with plenty of salt, which is key, and put it in a hot oven until the internal temperature reaches 160°F. to 170°F.
Sure, you can get a whole lot more elaborate with seasonings, bastes, stuffings, even subcutaneous arrangements of butter and herbs. But to make a delicious roast chicken you don’t have to do any of that.
My mother roasted chickens almost every Friday night of her adult life. She used to joke she ate so much chicken she was going to start laying eggs.
To make it, she’d arrange a bed of onions and potatoes on the bottom of a roasting pan that was said to come from my great grandfather’s house. She usually placed two chickens on top, side by side, breast side down. She’d season them within an inch of their lives with granulated garlic, black pepper, paprika and plenty of salt—“salt it like you are salting the road,” she would say. She covered the pan and baked the chickens at 350°F. for 45 minutes or so. Then she uncovered the pan, turned the birds over, turned up the heat to 400°F., and continued roasting them for another 30 minutes or more, until the skin was crisp, the juices ran clear (she never used a thermometer), and the edges of the potatoes around the sides of the pan began to brown. The meat would fall off the bone.
When I want to feel the comfort of my mother’s food and love, I’ll roast a chicken this way.
Last weekend Nate decided he was going to roast a chicken for my birthday dinner.
Before I met Nate, he used to enjoy cooking an elaborate meal for friends now and then, especially at Thanksgiving. But for the 17 years or so since we’ve known each other, it should come as no surprise, I’m the one who puts food on the table. Literally, I mean.
There are a few things that Nate still presides over in the kitchen. He makes all the ice cream in the house, for instance, from simple vanilla to more elaborate flavors, like the espresso stracciatella in our freezer right now. I taught him how to make quince paste, which has become a bit of an annual ritual. (In fact, last week I made the quince paste for a change and I messed it up, taking it off the heat too soon, before it had reduced enough to set firm.) Occasionally, out of frustration over the lack of chocolate in my baking choices, Nate will bake himself a chocolate cake or a batch of chocolate chip cookies.
But for Nate to make dinner requires a special occasion. In fact, a couple of years ago for Hannukah, he gave me six printed certificates for “Chef Nate Presents, Home Cooked Dinner.” Each was valid for up to four people, date and menu to be determined in advance. It was a touching gift, perfectly executed. Except that I never redeemed any of them. Until Sunday.
Without advance warning, I didn’t have time to seek out a special bird. So, we just picked up an organic, rather tasteless chicken from one of the supermarkets by our house. Nate pored over the recipe for my mother’s chicken in my Kitchen Sense cookbook. I told him to ignore it. There was a quicker way. I advised him to just scatter some onions, potatoes, and a clove or two of garlic on the bottom of a cast iron pan, put the bird breast side up on a rack above them, season it well with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika, drizzle it with olive oil, and set it in a hot (425°F.) oven for an hour.
He did just that. Well, almost. He thought he had placed the chicken breast side up, but when I went to offer my opinion on whether it was done, it was breast side down. No matter. I turned it over and broiled it for five minutes to brown the skin. Nate’s roast chicken was juicy and delicious. And—OMG!—those potatoes, grown down the street at Edgewater Farm and roasted in all that chicken fat, were amazing.
Which is just one more reason I have come to the conclusion that you don’t need to do anything particularly special to make a delicious roast chicken. Test kitchen brigades, please stand down. Also, from now on I’ve decided Nate is on roast chicken duty.
RECIPE: Nate’s Simple Upside-Down Roast Chicken
Yields 1 chicken, enough for 4 to 6 people
1 tablespoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon granulated garlic
½ teaspoon paprika
2 medium onions, diced
3 or 4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic, peeled, and if large, cut in half
1 whole roasting chicken, about 4 pounds, giblets and neck removed, patted dry with paper towel
Extra-virgin olive oil
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
In a small bowl, combine the salt, black pepper, garlic powder and paprika. Mix until blended. Set aside.
In the bottom of a 9-inch cast iron pan, scatter the onions, potatoes, and garlic. Place a roasting rack on top—I use an 8-inch round rack with pretty high clearance that I found in Chinatown, but if you just have a rectangular rack you can rest it on the sides of the pan with an overhang. Position the chicken breast side up on the rack over the potatoes and onions and season with half the spice mixture. Turn it over, breast side down, and season it with the remaining half. Don’t worry if some of the seasoning falls onto the potatoes. You want that to happen. Drizzle the chicken with some olive oil and then drizzle a little more around the potatoes in the pan.
Set the whole thing in the oven and roast for 50–60 minutes, until the skin on the bird is browned and crisp and an instant read thermometer reads at least 160°F. deep in the breast, higher in the thigh. Carefully lift the pan out of the oven. Turn on the broiler. With a pair of large tongs, turn the chicken over so the breast side is up. Place it all back into the oven and broil for about 5 minutes, until the skin on top is crisp. Remove from the oven and let sit five minutes to settle.
Using poultry or kitchen shears, cut the chicken in half while still over the potatoes so the juices fall into the pan. Cut off the wings and thighs at the joints, and snip the breast in half. Arrange the chicken pieces on a serving plate and spoon the potatoes around, making sure to bring the onions and the juices with you. Scrape any browned bits off the bottom of the pan. They are the best part.
