I’m baaaaaaack 🙂 Sorry I’ve been away for so long because my exams just ended. All I’ve done for the past few weeks was sleep, mug, eat and sleep. But now that exams are over, I’m super excited to be baking and cooking for November :> before everything starts piling up again and there are exams again in January ):
Anyway, here is the roasted chicken a made a couple of weeks back which follows Heston’s way of cooking. If you don’t know who Heston Blumenthal is, he’s this eccentric British chef whose restaurant, Fat Duck, is a place I dream of eating at. But it’s going to cost at least $400 per person, so I’m just going to continue dreaming. He has really science-y ways of cooking stuff but it comes out perfect and this roasted chicken is very replicable at home!
I first ate this chicken at D’s place and it had one of the most tender chicken breast meat ever. It was soft and juicy, nothing like those dry, stringy breast meat I was used to. Sadly, the skin wasn’t crispy because we didn’t have time to blast it (it was 2 something by the time the chicken was cooked and we were famished). So without a doubt, I had to remake the chicken at home to get the crispy skin.
Preparing for this chicken takes a day and the roasting takes a few hours which makes it a bit troublesome but then there are really little skills involved. All you need to do is to brine the chicken overnight, dump it into your oven for 2 hours, then turn up your oven to its maximum temperature to blast the chicken and get that crispy skin.
It was actually quite epic to turn my oven up to the maximum temperature because when I opened the oven door, the entire kitchen filled with so much smoke that we all ran out. Oh oh oh be mentally prepared that your kitchen will smell like roasted chicken for the entire day hahahah.
Other than that, roast away!!! 🙂
Ingredients
1 kg whole raw chicken
Water
Salt
50g of melted butter
1 Lemon
Pepper
Herbs de Provence
Directions
1. Mix 1 litre of water and 40g of salt. You can change the amount of water according to how much you need to cover the chicken but always use this ratio of 1 litre of water to 40g of salt.
2. In a pot large enough to fit your chicken but small enough to reside in your fridge, place the chicken and pour the salt water over, ensure that the water completely covers the chicken.
3. Place the pot in the fridge and leave it overnight.
4. The next morning, pour away the salt water and replace it with normal water.
5. When you want to cook the chicken, take the chicken out and pat it dry.
6. Place it on a baking tray and brush it with melted butter. Sprinkle the herbs, salt and pepper on the chicken.
7. Roast it at 100 degrees until the thickest part of the breast meat reaches 60 degrees Celsius.
8. Take the chicken out and let it rest for 45 minutes.
9. Turn your oven up to its maximum temperature.
10. Brush your chicken with melted butter again and place it in the oven.
11. Roast it for about 10 minutes or until the skin is golden brown and crispy.
Olive Oil & Salt 