For glazed chicken, grab a beer
Most glazed roast chicken recipes offer some variation on these instructions: Roast a chicken as you would normally, painting on a sweet glaze 15 to 30 minutes before the bird is done.
It sounds simple, but following these recipes actually turns up a host of troubles, as the problems inherent in roasting chicken (dry breast meat, flabby skin, big deposits of fat under the skin) are compounded by the problems of a glaze (won’t stick to the meat, burns in patches, introduces moisture to already flabby skin).
Yet we know that great glazed chicken is possible. We set out to develop a method for evenly glazed roast chicken with crisp skin and moist, tender meat.
Short of installing meat hooks or a rotisserie in the oven, what could we do? A vertical roaster, which cooks chicken standing up, was possible, but did who wants another gadget in the kitchen? Then we remembered a simpler alternative, found right in the fridge: a beer can.
after all); for a tender texture and a rich but not overwhelmingly eggy flavor, we found two whole eggs and an additional yolk to be optimal.
We kept with tradition and made the bread dairy-free, using water and oil to hydrate and enrich the crumb instead of the milk and butter found in less authentic versions. (Happily, we found that the challah made with water had a lighter and more appealing texture.) Just cup of sugar sweetened the loaf and contributed to its browned exterior.
The recommended shape for challah in most recipes is a three-rope braid. Shaped this way, however, our dough rose out instead of up. Some recipes call for braiding six strands for a higher loaf, but this can get complicated. Our solution was to make two three-strand braids, one large and one small, and place the smaller braid on top of the larger. We brushed the loaf with an eggwater mixture before putting it in the oven to produce a brown, shiny crust.