I’ve been roasting it WRONG! | Marion's Test Kitchen

so like most Cooks I thought I knew how to roast the Ultimate Chicken until I made this video experiment before I'm really surprised [Music] so I'm going to be testing out three common methods of roasting chicken one I'm going to do a wet brine dry brine comparison two I'm going to look at high heat roasting versus regular heat roasting and three we're going to look at all the fats hello mayonnaise now I've got two pieces of chicken here and I've gone with a cut of chicken that includes the breast there's also the bone still attached underneath here and also Wing so that we're getting dark meat and breast meat in our test here so I'm going to make the wet brine first and for that I just need salt two liters of water so brining is a process of osmosis which sounds like a very technical term it is it's where salt levels try to equalize so the salt on the outside of the chicken is trying to equalize the salt on the inside of the chicken moisture is going in Salt's going in and then your chicken is basically retaining more moisture so that when you cook it you will get moisture evaporating but you started out with more moisture in the first place so the idea is that your chicken will be juicier at the end of the cook now once the salt has dissolved in your Brine and you've chilled it down that's important because we're not boiling chicken here we're roasting it so this has been chilled down and my chicken goes in dry brine is simply salt all over your chicken so I have my two brined pieces of chicken here they have been brining overnight so let's go ahead and roast them yeah like even this with all like the runny water juices like don't love it I don't love it for this test I'm going to be roasting at the Fairly common roasting temperature of 180 Celsius until the chicken reaches 75 degrees Celsius internal temperature okay so this is really interesting you know why because the internal temperature of this chicken is right on point so at this point the internal chicken should be juicy and cooked through but look at that skin that is not like ideal so what I'm immediately thinking is if you've been roasting at that regular temperature that's often recommended you're going to be overcooking your chicken in order to get the crispy skin because you'd be looking at the chicken in the oven you'd be like that's not done the chicken skin is not crispy but the inside will be overcooking who knew you've been roasting chicken the wrong way your entire life I've actually never even done this experiment before I'm really surprised now there is one obvious difference here between the wet Brine and the dry brine because the dry brine is more golden and brown than the wet brine which I think is logical given that moisture is like the enemy of getting things crispy and Brown let's check out the wet brine first it looks juicy that is some juicy chicken I mean that that's impressively juicy I think let's have a look over here that looks great can you see the juice see that juice look at the juice wet Brown is Juicy and has a lovely amount of salty seasoning I think you would have trouble telling those apart so I like the idea that this dry brine is Juicy salty plus also less fuss than the Weber brown the skin is promisingly looking a lot more golden and crispy than the wet brine dry Brown is my guy High Heat versus regular heat now I'm really interested in this test particularly after that first test where the chicken breast itself was cooked through but the skin not brown or crispy so what I'm hoping for here is that a higher heat will give me the crispy skin at the point where the chicken is cooked through the middle but we'll see one is going to go in at 240 Celsius and one is going to go in at 180 Celsius so check this out will you this is my high heat roasting look at that color it's amazing it's beautiful it's everything I want in chicken skin it's golden and crispy and lovely this one not so much not the favorite Child this is the regular roasting temperature that most recipes or videos will tell you to roast your chicken at look at that it's just not good is it so what the high heat roasting has achieved is golden crispy skin plus it's perfectly cooked to that 75 degree temperature this one has not achieved much on the skin at all it's an underachiever but also cooked through the middle so if we kept cooking that at the 180 Celsius to get to this color the chicken would be overcooked let's get in here and slice these guys up so juice Factor I'd say we're pretty much on par which I'd expect because they're both cooked to the same internal temperature but here we have crispy golden skin and here we have not so crispy pretty yuck kind of skin now this cooked in 22 minutes this one cooked in 27. I mean this is the clear winner so that's it all right what have we learned one high heat roasting amazing for crispy skin two dry brine we like that the best great juicy chicken plus not so much faffing around with like a big bucket of wet chicken uh three we want to test out fats let's go let's do it so I think most people would think that an olive oil or a butter might be good fats to use and then I also want to throw in a bit of a curveball here because there's also a theory that roasting with mayonnaise as the fat does a good job I have no idea because I've never roasted chicken with mayonnaise but we're gonna do it today and we're going to compare all three to see what is the fat that gives us the most crispy golden brown skin so one piece gets mayonnaise one piece gets olive oil and one piece gets butter I'm gonna roast all three using the high heat method of 240 degrees Celsius until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 75 degrees now this is super interesting butter is looking beautifully golden nice dark skin very crispy olive oil surprisingly I think in terms of Aesthetics has not performed as well as butter because it's a little paler still good like the skin is really nice and crispy so still totally possible these two look good but have a look at this look at mayonnaise oh my goodness it's a revelation shiny but the skin looks crispy and it's sort of like emanating like golden Heavenly rays foreign that is amazing okay let's see what these guys taste like I mean butter is delicious I really think with the butter it's like the milk solids that have caramelized that give you both the color and the flavor there it's good it's nice olive oil I actually think the olive oil is slightly crunchier than the butter version really nice still lovely clean roast chicken flavor I'm into it but here's the real outlier let's get in here and try the mayonnaise I can't taste any mayonnaise that just tastes like really awesome roast chicken like it's literally just amazing the skin is beautiful it's crispy it's crunchy there's no weird flavor you would have no idea that there was even mayonnaise on there this is literally life-changing this chicken okay mayonnaise who would have thought it's amazing it's really cool look ah I really love that now we have to make the full roast chicken I want to make sure that all of these techniques combined dry brine high heat and the mayonnaise work on a whole chicken and let's see what it looks like at the very end so here we are the best roast chicken look at that beautiful crispy Brown Golden color it's lovely and even actually I think that mayonnaise really helps you out with that it's just delightful it's a work of art now if you've been waiting this whole episode to figure out how you know if a chicken is cooked come down here and have a look so into the thigh here I'm just going to insert my knife and then these juices coming out if they're clear then you are good to go now at the beginning of the day I thought for sure I knew what was going to be the best roast chicken I was thinking butter but one Little Pantry staple here mayonnaise is doing the best job yes I mean I've been roasting chicken for so long now my whole life and I have never tried mayonnaise before and now I'm going to be a mayonnaise girl I'm a mayonnaise girl there we go

Channel: Marion's Kitchen

Views: 103,055

Keywords: marions kitchen, marion grasby, roast chicken, how to roast chicken, how to cook, best roast chicken, marion grasby recipes, how to marinate chicken, mayonnaise chicken, chicken recipe, easy way to roast chicken, whole chicken how to, how to cook chicken, whole chicken, how to cook a whole chicken, basics of chicken

Id: eosdwgVOp5M

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2022