Wednesday, March 3, 2010

You'd Think I Knew What I was Doing


Behold ladies and gentlemen! A thing of beauty. The perfect roast chicken.

I haven't made a whole roast chicken in ages. Tonight was the night for its big comeback.

About a year ago, I learned the secret to a great roast chicken. Some of you may already know but if you haven't unravelled the mystery yet, I'll tell you.

Brine the chicken before you roast it.

Brine (at least my brine) is a solution of water, kosher salt and apple cider vinegar. It's nice to infulse the brine with spices too, but that's up to your taste. Immerse the uncooked chicken in the brine for at least four hours. The chicken soaks in the salt, the acid tenderizes the meat and the bird takes on a lovely flavour.

Dinner tonight was good. Roast chicken (obviously), brown rice and salad, healthy, healthy. Tomorrow I'll combine the leftover chicken with stir fry sauce and coleslaw blend. I'll dollop the mixture into wan tan wrappers and bake them in the oven...healthy dinner number two! Not bad, eh?

3 comments:

  1. Your second dinner sounds delish!

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  2. Recipe for the brine please! I bought a ton of little chickens at Food Basics this week for 99cents a pound!

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  3. Wow, that's a great deal! I don't know how good my recipe is (if you can call throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot a recipe). It's about 2 cups of water heated so it can dissolve about a cup of salt then add about a cup of vinegar and top it up with enough water to cover the chicken. A lot of people add a bunch of sugar and leave out the vinegar...meh. Then you can add cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, chilli flakes...what every you want. Hope that helps. Sounds like you have enough chickens that you can do some experimenting to find what your family likes :-)

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