Conflicting chicken-roasting advice leaves cooks fit to be trussed – er, tied • by By Julia M. Usher • Photo by Steve Adams Studio, food styling by Julia M. Usher
Posted On: 04/01/2007 E-mail This To A Friend!

Cookbooks, magazines and online cooking sites overflow with recipes for roasting a chicken, each with a recipe that purports to be more “perfect” than the next. With so many options, it’s difficult to envision anyone getting into roasting trouble. But, alas, along with these prescriptions for success comes a wealth of conflicting advice about how to roast for the juiciest results and with the least amount of effort.

Some recipes say truss the bird (tie its legs) so it cooks more evenly. Others advocate leaving the legs hanging loose for precisely the same reason. Some say stuff herbs in the cavity for extra zest. Others recommend mincing the herbs, combining them with butter and then smearing the mélange underneath the skin, directly on the meat, where the flavors can insinuate themselves even better.

There are also the perennial basting and rotating debates. Should you slather the meat with fat during the cooking process to keep it moist or avoid introducing any moisture so that the skin toasts to a delectable crunch? Should you rotate the pan during cooking or leave it be? Regrettably, the answers are all over the map – and often so contradictory as to leave both beginners and experts scratching their heads.

So why all the confusion? That’s easy. Roasting a whole chicken poses an inherent dilemma because it contains two kinds of meat, found in the breast and the leg, that cook at very different rates. The tender breast meat will dry out if it is cooked much past an internal temperature of 155 degrees, whereas the leg meat – which is higher in connective tissue – will remain sinewy and tough if it isn’t cooked to at least 165 degrees. Rotating the bird, basting the breast meat, trussing the legs and many of the other nuances in roasting technique are nothing more than compensating mechanisms developed over time by chefs determined to cook both legs and breasts to equal perfection.

Bless their hearts. I appreciate these chefs’ earnest intentions. Yet I still have to ask: Which of these tricks are worth doing and which represent wasted effort? Never one to shy away from a little trial and error, I launched a series of experiments to, once and for all, get to the truth of the matter. Seven chickens, 2 pounds of butter and several packs of herbs later, the pieces of the puzzle fit snugly together.

I should start by mentioning the few questions I didn’t ponder – to me, they were no-brainers. First, I’ve never seen trussed poultry that was cooked unevenly. Untrussed birds, on the other hand, are an unkempt lot, prone to slumping and slouching during roasting. This added mobility can sometimes lead to uneven heat exposure, so please take a moment to tightly tie the ends of the legs together with a piece of butcher’s twine (no convoluted knots or loops are necessary). The end result will also be prettier and more presentable. Second, be sure to set your chicken on a rack in the roasting pan. When the chicken wallows in its own juices, it tends to steam rather than roast, leaving it with pale, rubbery skin, especially on the underside.

As for smearing butter directly on the breast meat or basting the skin with fat, I found that neither technique resulted in a bird that was noticeably juicier than one that was simply unbasted and carefully cooked. The key to preserving moisture, in my opinion, is a vigilant watch of the internal temperature and frequent rotating. To give the tougher thigh meat a head start, I like to begin with the legs facing the back of the oven, which is hotter than the front. I also apply an extra heat blast to those parts by roasting at a high temperature (about 450 degrees) for the first 15 minutes and then dropping the dial to 375 degrees for the duration.

Once the thighs have started to brown, typically at the 30- to 35-minute mark, I rotate the pan. I may move it another two or three times throughout the process to ensure that the skin browns to a uniformly luscious crunch. The real litmus test of doneness, however, is the temperature that the thigh meat registers on a calibrated meat thermometer. Pull the chicken just as soon as the thermometer reads 170 degrees, and it’s hard to go wrong.

There are a couple of other issues related to the application of butter or oil. Any bird will render a fair amount of its own fat once it has roasted at least 30 minutes at a moderately high oven temperature. Adding more than a few tablespoons of butter only extends your cleanup time by creating a greasy, smoky mess with no apparent benefits. The extra moisture introduced by butter also heightens the steaming effect, so to achieve a truly crisp skin, rubbing with a minimal amount of oil (less than 1 tablespoon) often works best.

Finally, herbs – whether placed in the cavity or laid directly on the meat – only impart the slightest amount of flavor to the flesh. What’s more, minced herbs inserted under the skin stay soft and chewy and often detach from the meat once it is sliced. I prefer to rub dried, ground herbs directly onto the oiled skin where they become an integral part of it, commingling with salt and pepper to form a delightful crust. And, though herbs in the cavity won’t add much zing to the meat, they do steep in the pan juices, which – once de-fatted – make a very pungent sauce.

While I can’t claim to have completely solved the chicken-roasting conundrum, I trust that my findings will help you avert all trouble and navigate the many options with aplomb.

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