It is said that a good chef should know how to dress a salad, make a pie crust, and roast a chicken and how a chef does each of these can tell you a great deal about their cooking style. Well, I can simply and deliciously dress a salad and make a flaky, buttery pie crust, but I am here to confess today that I have no idea how to roast a chicken. I've never even tried.
Oh, I can do individual pieces of chicken and have even done some fabulous Italian brick chicken on the grill, but a whole bird cooked in the oven? That is way beyond me. I think part of it is that I just don't see how it could turn out juicy and delicious all the way through. If at this point you're thinking to yourself, "Oh Jody, there IS a way to roast a whole chicken that is juicy and delicious and what you need to do is blah, blah, blah" I want you to convert that "blah, blah, blah" into easy instructions and e-mail them to me. Seriously.
The other reason I have never tried to roast a chicken is because I can just drive down to Costco and buy one hot off the rotisserie for $5 and it is juicy and delicious. It is also probably full of an obscene amount of salt, but that is necessary for the juiciness and deliciousness, right? Okay, maybe you can achieve juicy and delicious without saline solution and a syringe. Again, if you know how to do this, e-mail me.
But salt concerns aside, the boys love Costco chicken and as it is not breaded or fried, I am more than willing to give them the heaps that they greedily stuff in their faces. What I like to do with Costco chicken is put it in soup. I've been on kind of a Thai food kick lately, so we've had this soup what seems like a dozen times in the last couple weeks. Although it looks like a creamy soup, that's just the color after the addition of some coconut milk. It's actually a pretty brothy soup and it's full of vegetables and protein from the chicken and a little peanut butter, so it makes a healthy and filling meal.
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Have you mastered those three chef skills? Which one do
you do the best?
Oh, I want this for lunch! Looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteYum, looks really good! I will email you my suggestions for good roast chicken. But I'll be honest too, I hardly ever roast a whole chicken myself. I like to cook smaller bits at a time. But roasting a whole isn't too hard, blah blah blah! :)hehehehe. (i'll email you.)
ReplyDeleteI've never heard that saying about a good chef. I think I'm still working on it, but have made immense progress just this year, as I have an awesome salad dressing I make, finally got my mom's pie crust recipe, and already knew how to do chicken.
Thanks for this post!
Jody, this soup does look delicious and I love the addition of cabbage - I've never added cabbage to my chicken soup before, but I may have to try that (or spinach). As far as roasting birds go, it's both easy and challenging depending on your state of mind ;) I'll email you a link to my recipe I use all the time, but every bird roasts differently because every bird is unique in size, shape, weight, etc. That being said, I found that once I embraced the challenge, I found it wasn't nearly as scary as I had built it up to be in my head...
ReplyDeleteUmmmm, let's just say I'm not a chef. :( Then I don't have to go into detail about not being able to do any of the 3 basic skills. But I can cut a whole roasting chicken in half and marinate for my husband to grill, does that count. ;)
ReplyDeleteKarah