The Meatwave

Perfect chicken is a voyage with no destination. Incremental advances plots points along the way, but the "X" that marks the spot seems to move a step away with each new conquest. So it forever will be, my love for chicken will have me endlessly trying new recipes and techniques in search of something that may never be perfection, but be seemingly gets better each and every time, and that's good news for you Meatwavers. Today that lands us on this chicken under a brick with lemon, garlic, and rosemary.

Unless you've got a rotisserie, the best way to cook a whole chicken is butterflying it. By removing the backbone of the bird and flattening it out, you create a more or less level thickness, which allows the bird to cook evenly and quicker. As opposed to a full intact bird, this alleviates the stress of overcooking one portion of the chicken, while another may be undercooked.

Even with that insurance, I'm still an advocate of a secondary plan—brining. The process of letting a bird soak in a salt and sugar solution prior to cooking increases the moisture in the meat, leading to more probability that the final product will be juicy. For a bird in the three to four pound range like this one, only an hour brine is needed, which is not much time at all—turkeys can take 12 hours or more—and is totally worth it in my opinion.

While the chicken is brining, lets talk flavor. I often describe chicken as a blank slate, since the light flavor of its meat will take on almost anything introduced to it. That being said, I find the most successful birds to be ones where the chicken isn't masked, but rather enhanced and complimented. Lemon does this exceedingly well, giving the meat a touch of acidity that seemingly heightens the natural flavor of the chicken. For added compliments in this recipe, I whisked together a lemon, oil, rosemary, and garlic mixture to later be brushed on during cooking.

You can't talk about a quest for chicken perfection without mentioning the skin. When done right, chicken skin is one the earthly delights—thin and crackling, crisped in the chicken's own rendering fat for maximum flavor. On the grill, achieving great skin is a much trickier prospect than in a pan or on a spit. This is where the idea of the brick comes in. By placing a brick on the bird while over direct heat, the chicken is further flattened an put into even contact with the grate and fire, creating a well cooked skin.

Once the skin is browned, the bird is flipped, brushed with the garlic and lemon mixture, and finished over indirect heat. The gentle indirect heat brings the final temperature of the bird up more slowly, pretty much the same concept as roasting. I like this method for being able to better keep an eye on the internal temp and avoid overcooking.

When the bird hits 160 degrees in the breast, it's done. A final ten minutes rest to allow the juices to redistribute is all that's needed before it's time to dig in. This chicken bursted with a bright, fresh flavor. It's meat was juicy and had a slight tanginess, while the skin was semi-crisp, soaked with lemon and peppered with garlic and rosemary that made it the star of the show. It's not chicken perfection, but on the path to get there, this is pretty damn good.

Published on Tue Jun 25, 2013 by Joshua Bousel

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