A Tale of Two Chickies

Once again, it's time to visit Gallus Domesticus, the Chicken. Such a multi-talented bird. The chicken serves as an egg factory, insect control, all-natural alarm clock, and even a schoolyard goading and insulting tool. Entire cookbooks have been written about them, and international conglomerates make billions of dollars by frying and selling them, albeit not before loading them up with all kinds of icky chemicals, enhancers, and artificial crud, but that's another blog.

The versatility of chicken carries two common pitfalls. The risk of cooking it to the point where it's a mass of dry stringy rubber, or having skin that is so pallid and mushy, that before we even taste it, we take the safer road and banish the skin to the side of our plates, covering up the maneuver by cleverly telling ourselves (and perhaps whoever did the cooking) that "I'm just really being careful with my diet these days."

I'll admit that my chicken dishes have on several occasions suffered at the hands of these two culinary specters. So I wanted to see if it is really possible to get juicy meat, and a tasty skin that doesn't taste like a deflated chunk of greasy rubber ball. But I also wanted something relatively easy to execute and college student friendly that could be done say with one pan and little else.

For starters, I wanted to minimize the risk of drying, so I decided to not cook chicken breasts which I think are the least flavorful part, and opted for whole chicken legs and thighs. These cuts I believe are more suitable for substantial "one dish" dinners because they all have a uniform shape and a leg joint that has a lot of yummy collagen we can convert to lip-smacking, finger licking gelatin. And we can fit 3 legs and 3 thighs into one pan, which makes for a pretty good bounty from just one cooking vessel. Also, I don't know what has gotten into the heads of grocers these days, but there is no way I'm shelling out ten bucks for a tiny pack of three or four chicken breasts, but I'll pay seven dollars for the family-size econo-pack of legs and thighs. Score 1-0 for frugality.

Now for both chicken dishes, I wanted to cook them in the same relative fashion, but make just a couple changes between two dishes to see if there would be dramatic differences in results. A relatively simple experiment I think.

Next for me was the cooking method. The most simple way I know to get good texture is to go low and slow when it comes to legs and thighs. So for the primary method, I took chicken A, lightly seasoned it with Lawry's seasoned salt (My pepper grinder disappeared on me, but that's a lament for another day), browned it up in a saute pan, and then braised it with some onions and a little garlic for about an hour and some change in a 300 degree oven. For a sauce, I went very simple, just a little bit of the pan jus with a squeeze of lime.

This method yielded chicken that fell off the bone, and it was moist, and it did make the most of the lip-smacking goodness from the leg joint. But the skin was a bit on the gummy side from being braised for so long, and the meat did fall apart a bit more than I would have liked. (Nothing wrong with shredded chicken, it's just not what I wanted here). Also, the sauce just kind of ran off the chicken and settled into a puddle on the plate. It wasn't bad, I just prefer my sauce to drape the meat in a cloak of yummy deliciousness. I don't like to have to go sauce hunting on the plate.

So, what could be done with chicken B that would correct these mild problems? I wanted to add flavor into the chicken meat itself, crisp the skin, and have the meat be fall off the bone tender, but still have some body to it along with a smooth, savory sauce that really stayed on the chicken where it belonged.

For starters, I wanted to layer flavoring into the meat itself. This I did by brining the chicken for about a half hour or so in a solution of water, salt, lemon juice and some good (but not great) tequila. After that, there followed the same procedure for chicken A: Stove-top browning followed by a good long and slow braise in the oven. Only this time when the chicken was done, I removed it to a plate and ran the pan juices through my gravy separator. Then, to ensure that the skin would not suffer again, the chicken went back in the pan and the whole thing got a 2 minute blast under the broiler. This crisped the skin nicely, and blackened it just a little bit for a "hot off the grill" flavor.

I wanted to make use of the fond in the bottom of the pan. After all, it's tough to beat the flavor of a good solid pan sauce when you can take advantage of a nice fond. So again, the chicken came out of the pan, and the pan went pack over the stove (and the dish ran away with the spoon ;) ). Since tequila went in the brine, I thought it would bring a nice balance to the dish if I included it in the sauce. I used tequila to deglaze all those yummy brown bits on the bottom of the pan and then added the pan juices back (leaving the fat in the separator). Then it reduced down a little before tossing in some lemon zest, a splash of lemon juice, and then a little fresh cilatro for brightening and a couple pats of butter to convert the mixture into a velvety smooth pan au jus that had the clinging power I desired. A little bit of seasoning to finish, and chicken 2.0 was ready.

Wow what a difference between the two. The few extra steps in making this dish gave it a depth of flavor that really turned up the volume here. The meat was again fall off the bone, but much more flavorful thanks to the brining process. The skin was so much better than before, the broiling helped the skin stand up to having a sauce layered onto it. There was a little bit of softening to the skin, but it still had a smokey, citrus and fresh, bright flavor. There was no harshness from any alcohol, which had long since cooked away, leaving only a light hint of agave in the background, almost as an after thought. All without any fatty "chewing gum" symptoms at all in the skin. Of course, the downside was that chicken B took about 2 hours to cook from start to finish, most of the wait time was for the brining. I think this will be one of those dishes I make on Sunday evening so I can have chicken for lunch on Monday, scoring two meals from one long cooking session.

I'm ecstatic that just a little bit of tinkering with this common and simple bird yielded such a dramatic result, and this post has gone on long enough. You all must be getting hungry by now from reading for so long. If you want to get a chicken like this, just brine it, brown it, braise it, broil it, blacken it (if you like), and you'll have a chicken formula that gives undeniable satisfaction and everything you could want from our versatile friend, Gallus Domesticus. The best part is, it leaves you free to use any flavors you like. It's not a "tequila and citrus only" method! It's an ideal canvas for trying flavors from around the world, and celebrating the diversity and versatility of our little clucking friends.

Yes, it's a little more work, and if you're thinking that all this sounds like too much of a challenge for you to try, all I can say is "C'mon, give it a try, what are you, Chicken?"