Guest post from the Midwest: Mary's perfect roast chicken + chicken stock

From the moment Mary and I met we started talking about food. We were new work colleagues, so there was probably some discussion of books, and music (just one the excellent lists she heads up) and other workplace type things in there too...but really, somehow we recognized a kindred soul on the food front immediately. I believe I sent her back to Wisconsin with a jar of jam I had recently made after that first meeting, and thus begun the exchange of delicious cooking ideas and meals and more. One of my favorite cocktail secret weapons has been some artisan blackstrap bitters she gifted me, and I've kept the California fruit preserves coming her way. This post has been a long time in coming (my fault entirely, as she delivered it back in May!), but with the look of things outside today—cue fog, cold wind...SF summer regulars—roast chicken is still a perfectly timed dish to be making. When isn't it really? 

Reading this I find myself to be quite the opposite kind of cook from Mary. I tend to be interested in cooking many things at once, and am constantly trying new recipes versus spending the time really perfecting a dish. Of course I do have my own staples I can turn out with regular consistency, but I admire her dedication to getting something just right. Read on for Mary's step-by-step guide to the perfect roast chicken, followed by chicken stock.

I don’t consider myself a creative cook. The dishes I enjoy making are simple, and I make them again and again. My grandmother used to say that the simplest things are the hardest to do really well. I often think of her when I get into a groove with a dish I am interested in, and start to make over and over again, to try and get it just the way I like it.

This winter, that dish was roast chicken. Not a fancy, complicated thing to make. But there is boring roast chicken, and there is satisfying and delicious roast chicken, and there is sublime roast chicken. I wanted to get to the really satisfying and delicious version, reliably, every time. (And maybe one day one of them would be sublime, but hey, that would be a bonus.) Roast chicken is an excellent thing to obsess about in the winter in Milwaukee: roasting keeps our place warm and uses the only kind of produce that is fresh and local in the winter. Also roast chicken produces a crucial dividend: stock.

Roast Chicken

The ingredients

For me and my spouse, we get a four pound organic roaster. This recipe can scale up for your massive Thanksgiving monster-bird, but a four-pounder is just right for one meal of hot from the oven roast meat and vegetables, plus cold chicken leftovers, and the all-important stock. If we have guests, I roast two chickens…..or get a turkey. 

Rutabaga and root vegetable love

I roast my chicken with root vegetables. In the winter, in the upper Midwest, if you want to eat local, you need to get to know your root veggies: onions, potatoes, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, celery root. (I adore sweet potatoes, but my spouse does not. Carrots and beets, especially the winter ones that have been around the block, work well, but I find them a little too sweet. But any and all of these would work well if you fancy them.) I will never be a vegetarian, but roast chicken taught me to appreciate rutabaga.

I love stuffing, and I am old school about putting stuffing inside the bird. But a normal chicken doesn’t have room for a satisfying amount of stuffing. I buy two lemons per chicken, and a big bunch of either rosemary or tarragon to stuff my chicken with.  

Finally: butter, at room temperature, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

The method

I am of the start-it-hot school of roasting: preheat the oven to 450°, and after the first 20 minutes of roasting, lower the temp to 400°. My oven is slow; for a hotter oven, you would use different temperatures. Experiment and figure out what works with your oven. I swear by twenty minutes per pound; I’ve tried other guidelines for how long to roast a bird and found them wanting. 

The bird, ready for the oven

I like using a rack in my roasting pan because I can but veggies right under the bird, but you can also just lay the bird in your roasting pan right on top of your veggies. The point of roasting veggies under the bird is to get them all covered with the delicious chicken juices. I rub just a little bit of butter on the bottom of the roasting pan, and put the chopped veggies into the pan as is: no oil, no water, no wine, just some salt and pepper. Veggies can get soggy and greasy, so I herd them to get the desired results. Potatoes and celery root absorb a lot, and putting them around the edges keeps them from getting too greasy. On the other hand, a lot of chicken juice really makes a parsnip or rutabaga worth eating, so I put those pups are right under the bird. You are going to have this operation going a long time in the oven, so don’t cut the veggies too small: larger chunks get nicely roasty without turning to mush. The most delicious roast veggies of all are onions (leeks and shallots are my favorites, but whole pearl onions are lovely too) and garlic, and those can stand up to anything. My standards for “enough garlic” are pretty far over on the bell curve: I use an entire head per chicken (two if they are small), scattering the cloves among the other veggies, and two or three inside the bird.

Rinse the bird inside and out. Cut one of the lemons and juice it, reserving the juice. Stuff the halves of the lemon inside the bird, along with as much of the herb of choice as you can fit and a few cloves of garlic.

I put the bird breast down for its trip to the oven: in my experience, this does make the breast meat more tender and juicy. (Thanks, gravity.)  This method sacrifices the classic breast-meat-super-crispy-skin combo. But I am not a chicken-skin fetish person; I’d rather have the white meat reliably juicy. 

Once the bird is stuffed full of herbs, garlic, and lemon rind, poised on the rack above the veggies, grab a chunk of room temperature butter and rub it all over the bird’s skin. Then, pour the juice of the lemon over the skin, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

If you roast breast side down, you don’t need to baste obsessively, but every 15 minutes does help keep the bird uniformly moist. More important, you should turn the bird every 15 minutes, so it gets evenly browned. I use olive oil to start, and once bird starts giving up enough juice that you can scoop it out of the corners of the pan, use that for your basting. 

Once twenty-minutes-per-pound is up, ‘resting’ the bird for 15 minutes before carving does help everything settle, and if you are of the school of making pan gravy, this is when you go to town. I am not of that school: I take my extra lemon, juice it, pour it over everything in the pan. I’ve never been able to make a gravy can hold a candle to the blend of chicken juice, chicken fat/butter/olive oil, and lemon juice that this method delivers.

Beautiful, ain't it?

Stock

The ingredients

The rule for stock is: nothing succeeds like excess. The whole point of stock is to have something rich, delicious, and full of vitamins to use in your cooking. But if you skimp, you end up with mildly flavored stuff that is hardly an improvement over water.

The carcass of your roasted bird is where it all starts. Cold leftover chicken is a big favorite in our household, so we have had to reach détente over how much meat to remove from the bird: you want some meat going into the pot. The bones are just as important: get them all in there, they add a lot of body and richness. Skin too, and if you got a neck or giblets with your bird, they go in as well.

The workhorses of making good stock

Pot veggies: onion, shallots, leeks, garlic, carrot, celery. Two big onions, a whole head of garlic, an entire bunch of celery, and three carrots is my absolute minimum. I like to include other veggies too, usually things that are mellow and sweet: asparagus ends, mild greens (baby spinach, lettuce), peas or corn. What goes into your stock will assert itself, so don’t kid yourself that stuff that comes in your farm box that you don’t like can be tossed in without consequences. (No cauliflower in my stock, thank you very much.) If you plan to do something where the broth’s profile can be strong, go head and add bitter greens (radish tops, turnip greens, mustard greens). Mushrooms create an amazing flavor profile, they aren’t going to hide themselves. I tend to avoid starchy root veggies, since they thicken the stock. But if you are making something creamy (chowder, bisque) that may be exactly what you want, so go to town with some potatoes or other root veggies.

I always include some herbs in my stock; a big bunch of flat leaf parsley, and some rosemary or tarragon (whichever was used to roast the bird). I also throw in five or six whole peppercorns, and if the stock is headed for an Asian recipe, a hunk of ginger. 

The method

Rough chop everything up and put it all into your big stockpot, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat until you’ve got a vigorous simmer, and let that keep happening for at least three hours. My most successful stocks have been the ones that cooked the longest: long simmering draws all the yumminess out of the meat and bones especially.

Once everything has been cooked into submission, strain it into a new pot with a fine mesh strainer.  For super-clear stock, strain it twice, using cheesecloth the second time. Then set it into the fridge to cool thoroughly. Once it is completely cooled it is easy to skim off as much fat as you want to.  Now, my grandmother would never dream of skimming off all that lovely fat, or at the very least she’d save it if she did. But to each their own. 

Before you use the stock, it needs a little finishing. I don’t put salt into my stock until this point, but stock does need salt. Heat it up, give it a taste: cold unsalted stock tastes different from warmed unsalted stock. A little something acidic will brighten the flavor, the juice of a lemon, or some dry white wine. 

Guest Blog Post: Distilling Your Own Gin

Who doesn't dream of making their own moonshine in the basement? Luckily, my pal Henry does it already, so I can just sit back and sip the end product.

I sampled his homemade gin at a holiday party a couple months ago and was blown away. First of all, it was so good you drink it straight, though importantly it must be very chilled. Straight gin sounds alarming, I know, but it was so deserving. You could taste all kinds of layers of flavor and freshness and juniper and I'm sure of it, the essence of the Pacific Northwest where he lives.

I immediately asked if he wanted to do a guest post on the how-to. Selfish reasons? Perhaps, but also I just found it so awesome I had to share.

Along with St. George's Terroir Gin (inspired by the mountain I grew up on), Henry's concoction is the root of my newfound love of gin. So thanks Henry!

Henry was apologetic about the quality of his photos, but I kind of fell for their Unabomber-makes-moonshine quality.

So here you go, Henry's Guide to Home Distillation:

This here is an absolutely bare-bones method of home distillation that is reliable, costs about ten dollars, and is likely the simplest and easiest way you’ll find to make high-quality gin at home. Moonshining is a very old art with a long history in America, but seeing how it remains illegal to operate an unlicensed still (mainly because the guv’ment makes boatloads in liquor taxes), I’ll stick to the premise that you readers are just curious intellectuals.

Before we get our hands dirty though, I’d like to lay to rest a couple of misconceptions regarding moonshine that might be gnawing at you.

1. You don’t need any fancy equipment. The setup I describe here is simple, cheap and workable. Without a little patience though, you’d do better to run to the corner for a fifth of Gordon’s and go back to daydreaming.

2. Properly made moonshine isn’t poisonous, and won’t make you blind. This type of rumor probably stems from unscrupulous moonshiners during prohibition who would stretch their liquor with toxic methylated spirits, or ignorant ones who would use lead-based solder in their stills. A quart of the gin I describe here will have less methanol in it than a glass of orange juice.

Now, to work:

Fermentation

The first thing to do is start fermenting. Might as well start now, as the process will take 10-21 days. One glossarial note: the mixture you’re about to make of sugar, water and yeast is called “must.” When it’s done fermenting it’s called “wine.” This recipe for moonshine must comes straight from Dolly Freed’s incredible book Possum Living, which I highly recommend you read if this sort of thing is interesting to you. 

Now, assemble:

1. A five gallon paint bucket or similar (one of those big blue Alhambras would work too).

2. Five pounds regular granulated sugar.

3. A big soup pot.

4. One packet ordinary active dry baker’s yeast.

Put a gallon and a half of water in the pot and put it over a burner, then mix in the sugar until it’s all dissolved and turn the heat off.

Pour the sugar-water you just made into the bucket, then pour another gallon and a half of cold water in after. If it’s about room temperature, add the yeast. Yeast like a steady temperature between 65 and 90 degrees. Much hotter and they’ll die, much colder and they’ll go dormant. Cover the bucket with an old t-shirt, something so air can get in and out but flies and dust are excluded. Within 24 hours, the yeast will start eating the sugar and producing ethyl alcohol and CO2. You’ll hear them bubbling; it’s a glorious sound. Leave your must alone until they stop bubbling, and go set up your still.

Distillation

This still is made of a teakettle and costs about four dollars (assuming you already have a teakettle). Besides that, you’ll need a rubber stopper the size of your kettle’s spout, and a 4-5 foot length of 5/8ths inch copper tubing, both of which you can get at the hardware store. Don’t use any metal in your still besides aluminum, copper or stainless steel. Hammer a nail through the rubber stopper, then thread the tubing through the hole the nail made. This tubing is your still-pipe, and it needs a specific shape in order to work properly. Taking care not to crimp the tube, jam the stopper in the kettle and bend your still-pipe to create a short rising section, then a dip to run the pipe through a cold water bath, then a sort of shepherd’s crook to bring the end of the pipe closer. Take a look at the picture to see how it’s done. When you’ve finished, blow through one end and hold your finger over the other to make sure air flows easily. That’s it: now you have a still.

When your must has stopped bubbling and turned to wine, pour it into your still no more than two-thirds full. With a three-quart kettle you’ll do “runs” of two quarts at a time. If you’ve done everything right, the wine is 10% alcohol (the natural limit of baker’s yeast), and there’s pretty much no unfermented sugar left in the solution. You can taste a little to see if it’s still sweet.

Assemble your still and turn the heat on medium while you fill a tub with cold water and place it under the dip in your still-pipe so a length of pipe is submerged. Ready a large jar and a shotglass.

When liquid begins to come out the end of the still-pipe, turn the heat down low and collect the first third of an ounce of so. These are the “heads,” and should be discarded. After that start collecting the drops in the large jar and take a taste of twenty drops or so every once in a while to check how it’s coming along. The first few ounces will be very near pure liquor, and after that more and more water will come up the pipe too. When it doesn’t taste of alcohol any more your run is over. You should have about half a quart of 25-30% liquor. 

Congratulations! You’ve made moonshine.

Two or three more runs like that and you’ll have enough liquor for a fifth of gin. Combine the product of all 3-4 runs in a jar and add a big handful of juniper berries.

Press them a little first, but don’t crush them. You can find juniper fresh by the side of the road in winter, or at your favorite food co-op. When they’ve sat for two hours, put everything (berries too) in the still pot and distill. Keep the heat low to go a little slower than usual so the juniper berries have a lot of time to soak in the hot moonshine. When this run is over, your finished product will be very strong, very tasty gin that you can water down to a more standard proof if you’d like.

Henry, maker of excellent spirits

Guest Blog Post: Swapper Vanessa Spices It Up with Two Recipes

I know we're still here in 2011, but I tell you, I'm ready for 2012. As proof, I'm kicking off a new year progression right now. Going forward I'll be shooting to once or twice a month mix it up here on the blog by featuring profiles of swappers, as well as guest blog posts by fellow swappers and swap hosts. What better way to extend and connect the food swapper community, right?

Vanessa's sweet, spicy & salty swappables

So I am thrilled to kick this shiny new gig off with a guest blog post by Vanessa Vichit-Vadakan. Her first time at SF Swappers was a couple weeks ago for our Holiday Swap, and she ooo'd and ahhh'd the crowd with a great array of sweet, spicy and salty items. So, without further ado, I'll turn it over to Vanessa to tell you about what she made and to share not one, but two (!) recipes with you. And both of them will add a little extra spice to your holidays. Joyfulness!

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Like a lot of people, I perk right up at the announcement of an upcoming food swap.  The day can’t come fast enough, and I can’t wait to see what goodies my fellow swappers will bring.  But the hardest part of swapping for me comes right after the initial excitement subsides and I have to decide what I’m actually going to make, that moment when I’m overwhelmed by the possibilities, when I realize I can make pretty much anything I want.  Anything!  That’s a lot of possibilities!

Lucky for me I can instantly rule canning anything because, well, I never learned to can.  I’m always tempted to bake because I love to bake, but right around the holidays, it seems that people are already inundated with baked goods.  I’m reluctant to make anything that has to be refrigerated because even though I’m meticulous about food handling safety and I’m more than happy to swap for someone else’s fresh salsa, I just get too paranoid that I’m going to poison someone, which would make me sad.

I want to make something that above all is delicious, of course, but I also think about what I can make that is interesting, maybe something that people might not want to put together themselves because the recipe might require too many ingredients or make more than they want, things that would make me excited to see on another swapper’s table.  For sure I think about what’s seasonal and what someone else might not bring, especially if they bring the same thing and it turns out to be tastier.  That would be like showing up at a party wearing the same clothes as another guest and having other person look waaay better in the outfit.  Yipes!

Togarashi

For the recent December swap, I thought of warming flavors for the chilly season.  Hot peppers came to mind, and I thought of togarashi, the Japanese chile condiment.  Last summer I air-dried some cayenne peppers that I’d picked up from Full Belly Farm at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market and used them as the base, grinding them just for the occasion.  There’s a good amount of variation in togarashi recipes, which vary in proportions as well as ingredients; some recipes call for hemp seeds or poppy seeds and some leave out the garlic or seaweed, but technically, "shimichi togarashi" refers to using seven ingredients.  My version takes a slight detour in that it actually uses eight ingredients and has a smaller proportion of chiles to the other ingredients than most versions I’ve seen (my chiles were quite strong).  There is a lot of room for tinkering with this recipe, and I do not claim it to be anything that your Japanese mother would call authentic, but it’ll warm you up and give your food a tasty kick.

Spicy Candied Ginger

I also made candied ginger for its warmth and presence in winter baking.  In most recipes I saw, the directions were to boil and drain the ginger a couple of times before giving it a simple syrup bath, but I decided I wanted to go with as much intense ginger flavor as I could get, so I skipped the leaching process and went straight for the simple syrup step.  The end result is a super spicy, biting candied ginger that is ideal for use in baking but not so much for eating straight (unless you really enjoy the burn).  A little goes a long way, so cut it up small before you add it to your gingerbread batter.  It works as a great way to sweeten and flavor tea and apple cider as well.

Many thanks to Aimée and Stephanie for all the organization and work they put into getting the swaps together and for sharing their corner of the Internet with me.  I hope to catch you all at the next swap!

Jook topped with togarashi

Try sprinkling on eggs

Hachimi Togarashi
or Eight-Spice Japanese Chile Seasoning

Togarashi is great in ramen or miso.  Sprinkle it on rice, French fries, or popcorn.  It also works well as a dry rub for meats.

1 tsp Szechuan/sansho peppercorn
1 tsp black peppercorn
1 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp dried orange peel
2 TB ground cayenne pepper
2 tsp flaked nori or dulse
2 tsp sesame seeds
2 tsp black sesame seeds

Using a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder, grind the peppercorns, garlic, and orange peel to a medium grind.  Combine well with the rest of the ingredients and store in an air-tight container.  


Spicy Candied Ginger (plus bonus by-products!)
Makes 3-4 cups

Peeling your ginger

To peel ginger, I find it helpful to gently pull apart the ginger at its natural branches, working with a sharp paring knife, though some people swear by the method where you take a spoon with a bowl that has a narrow tip and scrape the ginger with the concave side of the tip facing down to remove the skin. To make a less intense candied ginger, boil the raw pieces of ginger for about 15 minutes and drain them before adding them to the sugar and water.

1 pound fresh, organic ginger
2 cups filtered water
4 cups organic granulated sugar

Peel the ginger. Slice the ginger into rounds not more than 1/4-inch thick. You can make coins or you can cut on more of a diagonal to get longer strips.

Place the ginger, water, and 2 cups of sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat and simmer for 60-90 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the ginger becomes slightly opaque and slightly softened (but not soft). If the level of liquid gets low, add a little more water.

Remove the ginger from the heat and allow it to cool until it’s cool enough to touch. Place the remaining 2 cups of sugar in a bowl and line a large baking sheet with waxed paper. Use a slotted spoon to scoop up a few pieces of ginger, draining off the liquid. Toss the ginger in the sugar until it is very well coated, then place the ginger on the baking sheet in a single layer. Repeat with the rest of the ginger.

Finished product out to dry

Leave the ginger to air dry for about a day, flipping the pieces over once. Store in an air-tight container.

You’ll have leftover ginger syrup which can be stored in the refrigerator. Mix with soda water and a splash of fresh lime juice to make a refreshing ginger soda, or use it in cocktails or drizzle it on your oatmeal. If you have leftover sugar, it will now be lightly gingery. You can use that sugar for tea, tossed with fruit for a filling, toast (think: cinnamon toast but with ginger!), or on yogurt.


Vanessa
www.beetgoeson.blogspot.com

All photos by Vanessa with exception of swap table and sliced ginger close-up (taken by me).