Cooking Resources

forty_caliber · 08-13-2010, 07:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveSoMD

Good Eats ROCKS!

+ infinity Easily in the top 10 best shows on TV.

.40

Nicholas Mosher · 08-15-2010, 09:25 AM

I have the Alton Brown DVD with the "Romancing the Bird" episode on it, and tried it a couple times with chickens. While the foil triangle method was an improvement over roasting whole on it's own, I still found that the legs/thighs required more time (or the breast meat would overcook if it was given that time).

Can't speak to it's effectiveness on a larger bird.
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Andy - Roasting with the legs/thighs open as far as possible was one of the better techniques I found. I find it funny that so many of the world's "Great" chefs such as Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, and Thomas Keller swear by trussing birds to the point where they are like a bowling ball. It's exactly what you don't want to do!
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Of course much of this is a matter of personal taste. At Thomas Keller's restaurant Bouchon I had a roasted chicken as one of our dishes, and it was served with thigh meat that rode the fence between pink and clear. This is how I like my chicken breast - but personally I see thighs/legs as cuts that taste best when all of the delicious connective tissue has been allowed to soften and melt. Most of the higher-end restaurants I visited cooked their chicken with underdone (in my opinion) leg quarters.

The exact opposite tends to happen in smaller places with rotisseries. Usually you end up with amazing leg quarters and back meat, but breast meat that is only edible by including bits of juicy skin and mopping up what comes from the leg quarters.

Andy M. · 08-15-2010, 10:03 AM

Nick, I agree the dark meat is better when cooked to a higher temp (180F) for the improvement in texture while maintaining the moisture.

I stopped trussing chickens when I didn't see an improvement in the evenness of cooking and got really tired of the whole trussing routine - under this part, over that part, cross the string here then over, under around and through, pull it tight and tie a special chicken trussing knot.