Salt-Roasted Chicken Recipe - Roast Chicken with Thyme Butter Sauce

hello this is chef john from food whooshes calm with salt roasted chicken that's right this is one of those rare recipes where the name of the dish is actually the same as the ingredient list because that's all we're going to use salt and chicken and you're going to be so shocked at how flavorful how juicy and how amazing this comes out but just in case to hedge our bets I'm also going to show you how to make a super simple thyme butter sauce so here we go we're going to need 1 big chicken this is about a three and a half pound chicken we're gonna want to take that out of the fridge about an hour before we use it we don't want this ice cold we're also going to want to take a couple paper towels and make sure we blot off any moisture from the surface and then you know me I like to tuck my wingtips under I think it looks better and by better I mean not obscene and as you'll notice we're going to place that in a large skillet and yes you can use a roasting pan or baking dish but you're going to see why when we get to the sauce part why this works so well and before I salt this I'm gonna go ahead and snip off the chicken but I don't know exactly why I do this although I do vaguely remember a lecture back in culinary school about 30 years ago about some kind of gland in there although I could have dreamt that but anyway I snip that off for no good reason and then we're gonna go ahead and take some kosher salt regular salt will work here but as you well know the kosher salt has a larger crystal as much flakier so that's going to work better here and we're going to start by generously salting the cavity I'm talking about at least a teaspoon sprinkled in there and then after internal salinization is complete we're gonna go ahead and flip it over we're going to salt the bottom very generously we're gonna solve the sides we're gonna salt any nooks and crannies okay and not just nooks and crannies if you see a crevice I wanted salted so basically we're going to generously salt the entire surface except for the breasts we're going to do that last because what I'd like to do before we solve the breasts is tie the legs together I guess I'm just afraid of moving the chicken and knocking the salt off the breasts and with apologies to people like Thomas Keller and Jacques Pepin I'm not going to trust this chicken I think as long as you tie those legs together you're going to be fine and then the final stage is salting a very very generous sprinkling over the breast you're going to want complete coverage do not think you're using too much and I'm not sure what it is but there's just something about this method that produces a really flavorful and juicy chicken all right it might be the way this all transfers the heat although there's another theory that it's actually the power of the crystals oh yeah you remember back in the eighties when people would buy crystals because of their magical powers well this chickens going to be roasted with thousands of crystals on top of it imagine the power of that but anyway why this works is much less important than how it tastes which is amazing so make sure you have a nice substantial coating and then before we put it in I'm gonna take a piece of paper towel I'm just going to brush out the excess salts it's okay it's piled up on the chicken but we don't want too much in the pan because we are going to use this pan to make the sauce with later and by the way make sure at this point your oven is already preheated to 450 so we're going to brush out the excess and then we're going to place that in the center of a very well preheated 450 degree oven and we're going to roast that in that super hot oven for between 50 and 60 minutes approximately or until the internal temp of the thigh is 160 and when it comes out it should look something like this even though we didn't use any oil it's nicely browned and the skin should be fairly dry and crispy you know what I wish my dad was still around so he could see me getting paid for scratching a cooked chicken with a fork he would have enjoyed that oh by the way see those two little tears when we bought this chicken it was originally trussed up with string which I removed for the video and right where that string was tied across the breast it split as it roasted so I want to go on record to saying that's not my fault and yours will not look like that although it didn't bother me that much because I know Photoshop so I fixed that but anyway we're going to remove our chicken from the pan and we're going to let that rest 5 to 10 minutes which is the perfect amount of time to make our thyme butter sauce all right so let's go back to the skillet and you can see a lot of that chicken fat has been rendered out we're going to go ahead and take a paper towel and blot out like 90% of that at that point we can turn our heat back on to medium-high we're going to toss in about a tablespoon of pick thyme leaves and we're just going to give those about a 30-second sizzle in those hot drippings and if you're into things that smell amazing you're really going to like making the sauce so we're stir those around for a few seconds at which point I'm going to squeeze in the juice of one lemon okay the key to a perfectly smooth and emulsified butter sauce is some acid so I'm going to use lemon here you could also use white wine you could also use vinegar anything that has some acidity to it generally will work and I'm also going to put in a little splash of chicken broth you can also put a little splash of water if you want and by now that pans heating up and those liquids are deglazing the bottom so keep stirring it with a wooden spoon or spatula it will come up to a simmer and because we're using such a wide skillet it's going to reduce very quickly so just after like a minute or two a boiling it's going to look like this and at that point I want you to turn the heat down to as low as it will go and toss it a couple tablespoons of cold butter and very important when you first throw the butter and you got to keep it moving so keep stirring keep moving the pan and as soon as that butter is about half melted I like to pour in the juices from the chicken plate where our bird has been resting patiently so we'll pour those in that's going to thin things out a little bit and then we'll keep stirring again moving it again until all the butter disappears and if at any point to adjust the consistency you need to drip it a little more stock or water go ahead are you should be shooting for something that has that texture to it and at that point turn off the heat your sauce is done congratulations all we have left to do is season this up I put a little pepper a little salt a little cayenne we're going to mix that in and then we're going to take this simple sauce and we're going to spoon it over an even simpler chicken and that my friends is going to be one of the best roasted chicken dishes you've ever had I'm serving mine over a roasted red pepper and trout bean ragout which was very delicious and you can see here because we use that classic pan sauce technique even though the sauce is made mostly from melted butter it is not separated it is beautifully emulsified I could look at that all day although a better idea would be to eat it which is what I'm about to do and you can see as I cut into this that salt only method just produces such a gorgeous gorgeous roast chicken look at that meat I mean you serve this to your friends and every single time you invite them over for dinner for the rest of your lives they will think to themselves oh man I hope we're having that chicken yeah that when they serve with the thyme sauce that is so good but that has a ton of ingredients which is perfect let your guests think that so that'll just be our little secret and I know we got a lot of secrets between us it's what bonds us together but anyway just a really cool simple technique that I hope you try very soon so head over to food wishes comm for all the greeting amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,181,019

Rating: 4.9268765 out of 5

Keywords: Chicken (Organism Classification), Roasting (Culinary Technique), Recipe (Literature Subject), thyme, roast, Poultry (CSA Product), chef, john, foodwishes, Food, Cooking, Chicken Meat (Ingredient), Kitchen, Restaurant, Recipes, dinner, entree, herb, sauces

Id: d4z_N0GjqCY

Length: 6min 40sec (400 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2013