WINNER WINNER
Annie Smithers’ take on one quick and easy family favourite
It’s time to start thinking about the “entertaining” season. As the year starts to wind up, there are parties, Christmas, New Year’s celebrations and holidays in the not-too-distant future. For some home cooks, feeding people en masse can be exhilarating; for others, it is daunting. Yet there are little tricks that can be used to make life easier.
Here, we have a home-cooked version of what I refer to as “chicken shop chicken”. On the few occasions I have eaten shop-roasted chicken, often referred to as “barbecue chook”, I have not been overly impressed. Especially as I have no idea, and fear the worst, about what sort of chicken has been used. I always presume it was some poorly raised factory creature. However, there is something about the flavour that is familiar to many of us. I believe it is the salt content that makes it taste so appealing.
I would list roast chicken as my favourite thing to eat. If I’m sitting down to dinner with friends, I love to roast a chook. Plenty of butter, plenty of tarragon, a liberal seasoning of flaked salt and lots of basting. It’s something I lavish attention on. This is not that roast chook. This is a version where you can pop four to six birds in a large baking dish, put them in the oven and pretty much forget about them until the timer rings. This is for chicken you can divide into portions on a platter and serve with a variety of salads at an outdoor gathering, or pop into a container and take out hours later when you’ve reached your picnic spot. This is a chicken that has been brined.
The application of salt to meat is a time-honoured technique. To me, salt is one of the most important ingredients in any pantry. Salt can bring out the flavour of foods; salt can change the nature of foods; salt can preserve foods. In this application, it does a little of each. By brining a chicken, the seasoning of the bird is more than skin deep. The salt is used to intensify flavour, but it should be barely perceptible. The bird should taste better, but not salty. This can be done using either a wet or a dry brine.
In a wet brine, salt and other flavourings are dissolved in water and the chicken is submerged in the brine. Most animals are largely made up of water, so by submerging them in a brining liquid, we allow an equilibrium to develop between the salt in the brine and the salt in their natural juices. It gives us the ability to evenly distribute salt throughout the bird at a level that enhances the flavour but doesn’t overwhelm it.
A dry brine provides more of an opportunity to add powdered spices to the salt. This allows for colour changes and the slight crunch of salt on the skin.
Both techniques bring out the flavour of the bird. And it’s a flavour that reminds me a little of chicken shop chicken, except here I have complete control over what sort of bird I choose to buy. It also reminds me fondly of the beautiful rotisseries seen at markets in France, where the brining and cooking of chickens is done with a little more reverence than the birds found at the hot
• counter of an Australian supermarket.