The Best Way to Make Chicken Juicy Meats and Crispy Skin
In the world of kitchen tips and tricks, there seems to be an endless supply of “you did it all wrong” articles. I’ve seen various websites and videos claiming that their method of wrapping kitchen twine around a poultry is a way to ensure a juicy and evenly cooked meal, but it’s hard to figure out how (or who) to tie.
I roasted a total of four chicken in 48 hours. Was it because I need a lot of protein to function? No, I’m a freelance writer and the only form of exercise is running. Is it because I love chicken? I really like ducks more. Is this because I just needed to know which tying method would prevail in the two-day chicken bake battle? Yes.
For my own (and your) edification, I have tied different 2 ½-pound chickens in three different ways, leaving one for control. I cooked each chicken in the same way using a recipe from Chef Thomas Keller , roasting each bird for exactly fifty minutes at 450 ℉, after which I removed it and measured the leg and breast temperature. What happened next will amaze you (or at least be a little interesting, depending on your level of chicken-centered enthusiasm). Let’s start by discussing an untested bird as a basis, before moving on to three other methods.
No farm
The whole point of tying is to ensure that food is cooked evenly. According to Serious Eats’ Kenji Lopez-Alt , the breast must be cooked to 150 (Kenji states any larger is “cardboard” territory) and the leg must be at least 170 ℉ for the connective tissue to break down. A traditional farm that brings the legs to the sides of the poultry, thickening the breast to increase cooking time, allows the white meat to hang there long enough for the dark meat to reach the desired temperature. (At least that’s the theory.)
To be honest, I had never done farming, traditional or otherwise, before. I cannot claim this is the best fried chicken, although I have never had any complaints. But let’s take a close look at what kind of fried chicken you get, without a bunch.
Relative temperatures: This chicken came out of the oven at its hottest after a 50 minute roast period, with a leg 196 ℉ and breast 162 ℉, which means the leg cooked much faster than the breast. (Again, this is the purpose of linking.)
Skin: The chest had a beautiful golden skin that did not wrinkle during cooking, but the skin around the thigh was slightly loose and fair.
Juiciness: In my opinion, the meat of the legs and thighs was perfect. However, the breast was the driest of all chickens eaten and stuck slightly to the teeth as it chewed. (Although it was the driest of the four chickens, it still wasn’t nearly as dry. It was definitely not, as Kenji predicted, “cardboard.”) It’s also worth noting that this chicken lost most of the liquid in the pan (⅜ cup) during cooking time.
Traditional farm in two ways
The above video from the New York Times shows us how to tie a chicken with kitchen rope. It’s not that hard, but the pace of the video is so fast that I had to constantly stop and rewind, spreading Salmonella all over my laptop. Despite these difficulties, I coped with my task.
But what if you don’t have a row? (I didn’t until I bought some for this article.) It turns out that you can achieve almost the same results by tying a chicken with your own skin; Justin Chapple’s ginger delight shows us how.
Having tried both of these methods, I’m happy (and a little surprised) to report that they came out of the oven almost indistinguishable from each other. If not for the string, I would not have been able to distinguish between them.
Relative temperatures: After fifty minutes of cooking, both birds came out with breasts that were about 165 (a couple of degrees difference depending on where I stuck the thermometer in) and legs that reached 180. This means that this kind of binding actually resulted in the fact that the breast cooked faster , and not slower than the poultry without dressing. (To recap, this is the opposite of what a truss is supposed to achieve.)
Skin: The chest was beautiful, fresh skin again, although the skin of the legs suffered from being pressed against the rest of the bird, preventing the inside of the skin from extending beyond what I like to call “pale, flabby blonde.”
Juicy: Again, the dark meat of both birds tasted great. Both breasts felt pretty much like that bird without bandages and still clinged a little to my teeth (which makes sense since they were all roughly the same temperature), although they were by no means the driest chicken breasts I have ever had. were. Both lost slightly less liquid during cooking than untested poultry (about a quarter of a glass).
ChefSteps “How to Cook Chicken Better”
Grant Crilly of ChefSteps is a renegade communications renegade. He argues that the “traditional” method of tying not only robs someone of the tasty, crunchy skin on their legs and thighs, but also causes the skin on the breasts to contract, allowing the heat to dry out your vulnerable breasts more effectively.
Grant’s method causes the chicken to assume a strange human-like posture with a small gap between the chicken’s thighs. I found it to look a little unsettling, although the result is the best leg skin and the juiciest breast of all the damn chickens.
Relative temperatures: The legs came out of the oven at 181 ℉ and the breasts at 159 ℉, making these breasts the least cooked out of the group (albeit only three degrees).
Skin: This method produced beautiful golden skin in all the right places, although it is worth noting that I had no problems with breast skin contraction in chickens with or without traditional ligaments.
Juicy: This bird lost the least amount of liquid during cooking (whole cup) and the breast was so juicy it felt like it was steamed. The legs were fine too, but no better than those of the other chickens.
So who can you tie?
Although traditionally curled chickens were the slightest juicier than their non-curled counterparts, that was not enough to convince me that traditional Trussing is worth it, especially if most of the meat goes into salad or sauce. In addition, as we saw above, traditional tying did not decrease the speed at which the breasts cook, but actually decreased the speed at which the legs reached the desired temperature.
However, I was very impressed with the ChefSteps binding method. While this forced the chicken into a pose that dangerously veered into an ominous valley, the result was the juiciest breast, the crispest skin, and the least amount of liquid loss during cooking. If you can learn to staple, do it like this.