My friend, Charizard, sent me a challenge via e-mail a few months ago. The subject: "another chicken for your line up." The body: "This one is all technique. No seasonings AT ALL. Can you dig?"
With a smirk and a quick look at the recipe, I knew I had to try it. Challenge accepted.
Because the recipe looked so simple and uninvolved, I decided to try it out for a pseudo potluck for my two great friends' birthdays that my other friend, effing dericious, was generously hosting at his place.
So with doubt and hesitance, I started a recipe that flaunted zero seasonings, zero herbs, and zero butterflying. The recipe starts, "Even though people lament that 'chicken has no taste,' I have on occasion been inclined to leave it alone and cook it stark naked (the bird, that is)." Little does my friend know that I cooked the chicken stark naked. Well, I mean, now he knows.
Following the simple instructions, I set the oven to 475 degrees, washed two chickens and patted them dry per usual, and threw the chickens into the oven.
No, I wasn't making two chickens for the two birthday women in lieu of a cake. There were maybe twelve people at this party, so I just wanted to make sure we didn't run out of what I hoped would be some tasty chicken.
After thirty minutes of roasting the chicken breast side down in a cast iron skillet, the chicken looked like this.
After a flip and forty minutes, the chicken looked, well, surprisingly awesome. Golden, brown, beautiful, and crispy. The skin broke a little bit from the whole flipping process, but the wounds didn't affect the flavor that much at all. After I sprinkled on a healthy amount of salt, I took the liberty of snapping some photos as the chicken rested.
Work it.
Woooork it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
For good measure, and out of respect for the recipe, I decided to make the Garlic-Chive Butter Sauce. And I was really glad I did.
The great thing about this sauce is that it doesn't require anything of the pan drippings. All that's required, more or less, is a couple teaspoons of minced chives...
And half a stick of butter.
Because I was doing two chickens, I used a whole stick of butter and four teaspoons of chives. Mix in some water and some salt, and you got yourself a mean sauce.
With the chickens carved and the sauce complete, my friends and I dove in.
The great thing about this sauce is that it doesn't require anything of the pan drippings. All that's required, more or less, is a couple teaspoons of minced chives...
And half a stick of butter.
Because I was doing two chickens, I used a whole stick of butter and four teaspoons of chives. Mix in some water and some salt, and you got yourself a mean sauce.
With the chickens carved and the sauce complete, my friends and I dove in.
Just like the recipe promises, the chicken is deliciously moist and the golden skin is amazingly crispy. The breast meat was a tad on the dry side, but that wasn't anything the butter sauce couldn't fix. The sauce tasted exactly like what its name suggests: buttery, garlicky, and chivey. I would imagine garlic-chive butter stuffed under the chicken skin before the cooking process would have a similar effect, but by adding the sauce at the end, the relative freshness of the garlic and chive really shone through.
This is probably the absolute best chicken to prepare for a larger party. There is little to no time commitment and there's none of the pressure of excessive prep before tossing these in the oven. The sure-shot end result is more than satisfying and if your party involves anything alcoholic, the chicken only gets more satisfying as the night progresses.
Touché, Rozanne Gold's opinion. Touché.
Seriously did get more satisfying the more I drank...also was so infatuated with the chicken that I forgot to eat everything else at this dinner...including the freaking meatballs. I want to try them please. In my mouth. Thanks.
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