Hi everybody:

So I decided to do some drunken chicken experiments this last weekend
and I thought I'd report on the outcome. (I was drunk, not the chicken...)

Ultimately I ended up doing the bird on my rotisserie on my Weber gas
grill but there's a bit of back story to my drunken chicken adventures.

It all started when I tried Thomas Keller's roast chicken technique
awhile back, and I must say it was incredible.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/fo...Chicken-231348

It really did turn out with wonderfully crispy skin and I was astonished
that the bird could turn out so juicy at such a high temperature.

The only caveat is that it does make a fair amount of smoke when you do
it indoors, so I borrowed an idea from the America's Test Kitchen
people. My way was a bit different but I think it's an improvement.

To mitigate the smoke, I used a broiler pan and (in a departure from
ATK) I lined the bottom of the pan with aluminum foil and then a layer
of parchment paper, followed with a layer of Yukon Gold potatoes. You
then put the bird on the slotted cover of the broiler pan as normal.

When the high temperature fat renders from the bird, it drips through
the slots and is absorbed by the potatoes and makes a wonderful side
dish... possibly even better than the chicken. I found that the
parchment is necessary because no matter what you do to the foil, the
potatoes will still stick and it's a pain in the ass.

Anyway, summer has now hit and I thought that if 475° was good, why not
try 900°? (Did I mention the chicken was on sale and I was drinking?)

Out on my deck I have an old Weber gas grill with a rotisserie that gets
hotter than hell and I decided it was high time to abandon my
low-and-slow technique and put the spurs to it.

I'm not really sure how hot the damn thing gets because the thermometer
only goes up to 600° and wraps around to the 800° range before it hits
the stop. Anyway, I tried a couple game hens at full throttle with
reasonable success, so I thought it was time to try a chicken. (Hell,
they were on sale for $.79 a pound. What could I lose?)

The first bird I did actually turned out better than I expected.
Unfortunately at about the 10 minute mark the fat sort of released
itself from the chicken all at once and created the mother of all grease
fires. (I pretty much turned it into a meteor...)

I pulled out the rotisserie skewer and waved it around a bit and
eventually got everything extinguished. Surprisingly, the meat was darn
juicy and the skin was even edible... sorta like any blackened skin from
your grill at an outdoor picnic.


I knew I was on to something and decided to give it another go with a
bit more thought and a bit less booze. Here's what I did:

To give myself a bit more cushion, I brined the bird in a 10% solution
for three hours and then dried it really well. Up 'til now, I haven't
mentioned seasoning. Thomas Keller goes with nothing but kosher salt and
pepper, which is delicious, but I wanted to try something new.

In addition to the salt and pepper, I went with a liberal sprinkling of
Chinese 5 spice powder from World Spice Merchants, just down the street
from me. They're one of the great mail-order spice houses in the country
and I encourage you to give them a try. www.worldspice.com

I put the bird on the rotisserie at about 400° until it started to
release it's torrential waterfall of fat at about the 20 minute mark.
Once the bulk of the fat was gone, I jacked the heat wide open without
fear of any flare ups. For reference, on a Weber gas grill you need to
keep the middle burner off the entire time. With all three open it's
just too ridiculously hot.

With just the front and back burners on, the temperature stabilized at
600-700 degrees and I used my Thermapen to pull the bird at just the
right time.

It turned out wonderfully juicy with a pretty crispy and perfectly
browned skin. I've found with a rotisserie you're never going to get a
perfectly crispy skin because it continuously bastes itself in it's own
fat, but doing it at ridiculously high temperature makes for skin a lot
less flaccid than the low-and-slow method.

Give the high temperature method a try. It's a great way to spend a
summer afternoon. I also encourage you to try Chinese 5 spice. I'd never
tried it before and the stuff is fantastic.

Hasta,
Curt Nelson