Roast Chicken Challenge

So I saw that the The Amateur Gourmet has a recipe for what he claims is "the best chicken dinner you'll ever taste." This is flat out WRONG. I don't blame the man, as his assertion appears to come from ignorance, not mendacity, but that does not make his statement any less incorrect.

The flaws in "the best chicken dinner", as I see them:

• No brining = dry chicken.
• Dark meat needs to reach a higher temperature than breast meat to be fully cooked, and this is best facillitated by butterflying.
• 400 degrees is for wimps; 500 degrees gets you really crisp skin.
• You need to measure the temperature of the meat; not just wing it.

Cooking the potatoes in the rendered chicken fat is gold though.

I'm still working my way through Feijodas, and we have house guests this weekend, but next week I'm going to do America's Test Kitchen's High Roast Chicken recipe and document it for teh blog.

If you'd rather see how so called "experts" do it, or are merely impatient, you can watch their presentation of the recipe:




I've made this a handful of times and it totally rocks. In fact, I love it so much the two times I've made turkey I've done the High Roast version for that as well.