Zuni Cafe's Roasted Chicken
Adapted from the Zuni Cafe cookbook, San Francisco. This recipe is a simplified version of the original, focusing on a quicker, easier approach to perfectly roasting a chicken. It's typically served with a bread salad, but any side dish will do. The key is achieving perfectly roasted skin with minimal fuss. Serves 2 to 4.
Adapted from the Zuni Cafe cookbook, San Francisco. This recipe is a simplified version of the original, focusing on a quicker, easier approach to perfectly roasting a chicken. It's typically served with a bread salad, but any side dish will do. The key is achieving perfectly roasted skin with minimal fuss. Serves 2 to 4.
- Carbohydrate 0.00540083333333333 g
- Cholesterol 0 mg
- Fat 0.000271666666666667 g
- Fiber 0.00220833333333333 g
- Protein 0.0009125 g
- Saturated Fat 8.16666666666667E-05 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (10g)
- Sodium 0.398333333333333 mg
- Sugar 0.0031925 g
- Trans Fat 1.16666666666667E-05 g
- Calories 0 calories
Step-by-step
- Season the chicken: [1 to 3 days before serving; give a 3 1/4 to 3 1/2-pound chicken at least 2 days]
- Remove and discard the lump of fat inside the chicken. Rinse the chicken and pat very dry inside and out. Be thorough ? a wet chicken will spend too much time steaming before it begins to turn golden brown.
- Approaching from the edge of the cavity, slide a finger under the skin of each of the breasts, making 2 little pockets. Now use the tip of your finger to gently loosen a pocket of skin on the outside of the thickest section of each thigh. Using your finger, shove an herb sprig into each of the 4 pockets.
- Season the chicken liberally all over with salt and pepper. Season the thick sections a little more heavily than the skinny ankles and wings. Sprinkle a little of the salt just inside the cavity, on the backbone, but don?t otherwise worry about seasoning the inside. Twist and tuck the wing tips behind the shoulders. Cover loosely and refrigerate.
- Prepare your oven and pan: [Day of, total time is 45 minutes to 1 hour]
- Preheat the oven to 475?F. Choose a shallow flameproof roasting pan or dish barely larger than the chicken, or use a 10-inch skillet with an all-metal handle (we used a 12-inch cast iron frying pan for a 3 1/2 pound chicken). Preheat the pan over medium heat. Wipe the chicken dry and set it breast side up in the pan. It should sizzle.
- Roast the chicken: Place the chicken in the pan in the center of the oven and listen and watch for it to start browning within 20 minutes. If it doesn?t, raise the temperature progressively until it does. The skin should blister, but if the chicken begins to char, or the fat is smoking, reduce temperature by 25 degrees. After about 30 minutes, turn the bird over ? drying the bird and preheating the pan should keep the skin from sticking. Roast for another 10 to 20 minutes, depending on size, then flip back over to recrisp the breast skin, another 5 to 10 minutes.
- Rest the chicken: Remove the chicken from the oven and turn off the heat. Lift the chicken from the roasting pan and set on a plate. Carefully pour the clear fat from the roasting pan, leaving the lean drippings behind. Add about a tablespoon of water to the hot pan and swirl it.
- Slash the stretched skin between the thighs and breasts of the chicken, then tilt the bird and plate over the roasting pan to drain the juice into the drippings. You can let it rest while you finish your side dishes (or Bread Salad, below). The meat will become more tender and uniformly succulent as it cools.
- Serve the chicken: Set a platter in the oven to warm for a minute or two.
- Tilt the roasting pan and skim the last of the fat. Place over medium-low heat, add any juice that has collected under the chicken, and bring to a simmer. Stir and scrape to soften any hard golden drippings. Taste ? the juices will be extremely flavorful.
- Cut the chicken into pieces, spread on the warm platter (on top of the Bread Salad, if using).
- Capitalize on leftovers: Strain and save the drippings you don?t use, they are delicious tossed with sp?tzle or egg noodles, or stirred into beans or risotto. You can also use them, plus leftover scraps of roast chicken, for a chicken salad.
A properly roasted bird emerges from a 475°F oven with blistered skin that crackles under a knife, exposing meat that remains exceptionally juicy due to prolonged dry brining. Every ounce of this ingredient deserves utilization, making it an exercise in total kitchen economy where nothing goes into the trash bin.
- Dry the skin with extreme care; any residual surface moisture forces the bird to steam rather than brown during the initial twenty minutes of roasting.
- Slide tender herb sprigs directly under the breast and thigh skin pockets up to three days in advance to allow deep flavor penetration.
- Choose a heavy ten-inch cast-iron skillet over a standard sheet pan because preheating metal guarantees the chicken will sizzle instantly upon contact and prevents sticking.
- Deglaze the hot roasting pan with a tablespoon of water after skimming the clear fat to capture every scrap of browned drippings for pasta or risotto.
- Let the cooked meat rest on a plate before carving so the internal juices redistribute evenly throughout the muscle fibers.
Pair this main course with a rustic bread salad soaked in the pan drippings, or toss leftover scraps into beans to maximize your grocery budget. Executing the dry-salting phase days ahead remains the single factor determining whether the skin shatters or merely softens.
