Fat Kid Basics, Session #2: Whole Roasted Chicken and Pan Gravy

Chicken bores me. When I’m standing at the butcher counter, breathing heavily in a hungry daze and fogging up the glass shield that stands between me and all my favorite dead-and-ready-to-eat friends, I don’t so much as glance at the poultry section. I’m too distracted by the cowboy cut rib-eye, the sexy skirt steak, the sizeofmyface pork chop. Maybe it’s because of how I experienced the family chicken dinner growing up. Said dinners included the standard white chicken breast, placed in a zip-loc bag to take a sad bath in some generic Italian dressing, then put to death on a grill, never even having a chance to taste remotely good in the first place.


So much potential.
So much failure.
The Washington Redskins of Sunday dinner.


Maybe that’s why I never order chicken when I eat out. When I see the standard chicken dish on a menu, I skip right over it. Except for one time in recent memory, maybe a year ago, when I ordered the fried chicken at Trummer’s On Main (great restaurant). Anyways, once I started cooking, I began buying chicken on a regular basis, forging some kind of Fat Kid mission to figure out ways to inject excitement into this underachieving dinner-bird. I’ll be letting you know about some of my results, but quite recently, I discovered something that most have probably been enjoying for their entire lives. So let’s begin with the whole roasted chicken.


Simple? Yes. Boring. Ohhhh no no no. Especially when there’s gravy involved.
Swim-able gravy.

And it’s all so damn easy, that the method of roasting a chicken represents a technique everyone should be able to do and do well. So go to Whole Foods and buy one of their organic young chickens. They’re generally about 4 pounds, good for serving 3-4 people, or 1 Fat Kid. Don’t buy that raised-in-their-own-shit Perdue garbage. Here is the complete list of what you will need.


1 whole chicken
5 cloves of garlic
1 shallot
1 lemon
fresh thyme
fresh oregano
fresh parsley
1 cup of sliced mushrooms
1 cup of chicken stock
¼ cup white wine
1 tablespoon of whole grain mustard
extra virgin olive oil
butter
salt
pepper
dried oregano


Pre-heat the oven to 450. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and dried oregano to taste. I like my skin salty, so I let it snow on the chicken. Stuff the bird with half a lemon, half a shallot (peeled) some of the fresh thyme and oregano and few cloves of garlic. This helps some flavors permeate throughout. Place a couple pats of butter on top of the bird. This helps...well just do it because it tastes good.

I use my cast iron skillet for almost everything, so I place the bird in there, along with the other half of the lemon, shallot, remaining garlic cloves and herbs as well. I just rest them right there in the pan so that as the chicken cooks, these flavors melt into the pan, which will help with the gravy swimming pool I plan on making afterwards.

I’m also tying flavors together. See I do actually think about this shit.

Once you’ve done all that, throw it in the oven and let it roast at that temperature for 20 minutes, then lowering the heat to 350.


Insert meat thermometer.
No you’ve got time to kill, so go drink some beers.


Don’t drink so many beers that you forget to baste your friend, because he’s thirsty and he needs it. The general rule of thumb is 20 minutes per pound, so do the math. However, keep an eye on the meat thermometer, because once it hits 165, its doneski. I like to wait till it hits 160, then turn on the broiler and really get that skin on top nice and crispy. You’ll be happy you did this. Just watch it and make sure you don’t burn it, because then you’ve just wasted a bunch of time.

Pretty birrrrrd.

Take the bird and put it on a platter, covered in foil. It needs to rest for 10 minutes. Now it’s gravy time.


The skillet has so much fatty goodness in it right now it’s practically screaming “MAKE GRAVY OUT OF ME.” Remember the lemon, shallot, garlic, and herbs you put in there? Well take it all out, but hold onto that nicely caramelized lemon. You’ll need it. Put the skillet over medium heat and add the mushrooms. Let them get nice and soft, turn the heat to high and add the wine, scraping up any charred bits off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Once that’s cooked down a bit, add the chicken stock.

Reduce. Cook down to half and finish it off with the mustard and a couple of pats of cold butter. Stir it around and let the gravy thicken up a bit, throwing in some chopped parsley and squeezing in that other half of lemon juice to finish it off. The lemon takes on a rich, deeper flavor after sitting in the skillet and roasting with the chicken for so long, which is why I told you to hang on to it. You’re welcome.

Carve the chicken up, serve with mashed potatoes, and pour that gravy all over the place.
Dive in.

The skin is the best part. Wrap me up it in. Edible chicken-skin blanket.
I always go for the drum stick. You bite into that really plump part, you hear a slight crackle from the salty skin, followed by the warm, juicy meat underneath that pulls away from the bone as if it wants to simply fall into your mouth. This is not that skinless, boneless chicken breast you’re probably so used to having. This chicken tastes different. This is how chicken is supposed to taste. I mean it still tastes like chicken, but with an added flavor magnifying glass that brings out everything you’ve missed when the skin and bones are removed.


Oh yeah, and there’s gravy.


Buttery. Homey. Like something your Grandma would make, but a little better. There’s a slight sweetness from the caramelized lemon. The mushrooms are soft, but with enough of a bite as they bring some earth to whole thing, while the mustard adds a bright tangy flavor against the richness of the stock and pan drippings. It all comes together with the hint of that white wine you added, slightly creeping up in the background.


Pour this in a glass and I’ll fucking drink it.


The gravy is also great over the mashed potatoes (sorry I don’t have the recipe for that, this post is already long as shit as it is).


This is a great Sunday dinner. Eat it while you’re watching football. But not during the Skins game, because that would just ruin everything.


So try this recipe out Fatties.


-Fat Kid