Week 8 of the 2020 Chicken Challenge: Herb Butter Roasted Chicken

Running a bit late on the post this week because I haven't cooked much the last week - the hubs has a vile cold and the meds are working but not sitting well with him.   He hasn't had much of an appetite, let alone been up for anything "experimental"....yes I made homemade chicken soup, and I'll probably make another batch this week.    As I've said with all the chicken challenges, they are "real world challenges", so sometimes the real world takes priority.

I wanted to do something relatively simple for dinner that was appealing to someone with no appetite, and roast chicken is always a good option.   I already have a couple of whole roast chicken options tagged that I'll be making for this challenge, so I picked one of the more straightforward versions, the Herb Butter Chicken out of "Everyday Dorie" by Dorie Greenspan.  

I love Dorie's cookbooks and "Everyday Dorie" is no exception.    Her "Baking:  From My Home to Yours" is possibly my all time favorite baking book, with her "Dorie's Cookies" being a close second.      I had intended to also make a dessert and a side dish out of this book as well, but the hubs wasn't up for a big dinner, and I can't be trusted having an entire cake to myself.  I'll do those another time.  

I opted to try one of Aldi's "Never Any" line of whole chickens - while not specifically organic, they are antibiotic-free, free range, no salt brine added, among other things.   They also don't have the organic bird price tag.  As always - the recipe calls for a nearly impossible to find 4 lb bird, so I went with a bird that was just a little over 5 lbs.

This is not a complicated recipe and includes several "tricks" I've tried before.   I started by making an herb butter with 6 tablespoons of butter, the zest of one lemon, about a half cup of minced fresh herbs, a couple minced scallions, salt, and pepper.    You really could use a lot of interesting combinations of herbs here, depending what direction you wanted to go with the flavors.    My (non Aldi) store was a little limited in selection the day I was there, but I did get some fresh thyme, sage, and parsley and used those.     Rosemary, marjoram, oregano, dill would all have been good as well.

Dorie has you roasting the chicken in a Dutch oven, so I pulled out my 5 1/2 quart Le Crueset.   More on vessel type later....given that it was a slightly larger bird than the recipe intended, I think I had better options than what I used.

You build the pot by using a couple of slices of stale-dish bread (I used some from a mini baguette that I specifically bought and then left out to dry) spread with a  little bit of the herb butter blend.   Drizzle a little oil in the bottom of the pan, add the bread, a sliced onion, and a bay leaf.

You also need some white wine for the pot.   So - just stating the obvious - I love wine.  I far prefer to drink red wine over white, so I don't always want to open a full bottle of white to use in a recipe, and then have it sit for weeks in the fridge until I finish using it up.    

And so keep these mini bottles of white wine in the pantry - they're the type you find in 4 packs at the booze store.   The bottles are about 5 to 6 ounces i.e. about the equivalent of a glass of wine.....and about what you need for most recipes.

I added one of these little bottles to the pot as well per the recipe, because wine with butter and herbs and chicken are just never a bad thing.  Usually.  More on that later too.

Then there's the chicken.    I loosened up the skin as well as I could without tearing it, and worked the herb butter in chunks under the skin, spreading it out as much as possible.    The outside of the bird got a hefty sprinkle of salt.   I cut the lemon I zested for the butter in half and stuffed that inside with the stems leftover from the herbs, plus some extra parsley and scallions.

The chicken gets added to the pot on top of the bread and onions and wine, then into the oven for about an hour at 425F on the convection setting until cooked through.   (Note:  the recipe calls for roasting it at 450F, but I dropped the temp 25 degrees to compensate for using the convection setting on my oven.

Beautiful, isn't it?    Well, sort of.   The breast browned up well but if you look, you can see the drums (and the thighs) really didn't brown well.    I did temp check them to make sure they were cooked through (they were).      It's definitely not nearly as evenly browned as the picture in the cookbook....but there you have it.

As I mentioned, the hubs hasn't had too much of an appetite, so I just made a salad with butter lettuce, cucumbers, scallions, dried cranberries and goat cheese crumbles tossed in a homemade red wine vinaigrette for a side dish. 

As always, whenever I roast a chicken, I snag the breast to eat first.  White meat is always the first to dry out and if that's good....it's a good recipe.

The chicken itself was extremely moist and delicious, as a roast chicken tends to be...really nice flavor from the herbs and butter under the skin.   I had even gotten some down into the thigh area, even though the skin didn't brown over it, the meat itself was extremely flavorful and tender.      The chicken worked really well with the sweet cranberries and butter lettuce and the vinaigrette cut some of the richness of the chicken skin.

But let's address a couple issues.    The non-browning of the legs is obviously an issue because cooked or not, they're just better with crispy skin.   I think that was a result of it being a bigger bird then called for and not getting enough exposure in a high sided dutch oven.  I think it would have worked better either in my braised (wider, low sided) or even in a baking dish.  I'm particularly fond of the enameled cast iron baking dish I've been using lately - I should have gone with that.    The lower dish would have allowed for more exposure/air circulation around the legs.....had I spatchcocked the chicken, the overall chicken would have browned more evenly.

Let's also address what's going on in the bottom of the pan, which I didn't get a picture of but should have.   I've done several recipes that use bread under a roasting chicken ~ one of Dorie's recipes from "Around My French Table" which was my first time doing it, and subsequently in other recipes like Ina's Roast Chicken and Bread Salad, which is a riff on the famous Zuni Cafe roast chicken.    You put chunks of dry crusty bread on the bottom of the pan to roast under a chicken and 2 things happen - the bread gets deep deep brown and crusty (but not hard) on the bottom and then the top (and bottom as well) soak up all the fat and juices from the roasting chicken, making the bread amazing and rich and decadent - you can't eat too much of it but soooo good.  It can be a bit soggy but not terribly so.

Because this recipe called for the addition of wine into the bottom of the pan - the bread never got that super brown bottom and it was soggy to the point of falling apart into mush.    Very disappointing - so the bread and onion mix in the bottom basically got wasted.

Overall Rating:   8 out of 10.   Despite the browning issues and the bread issues, the chicken itself was delicious, and ultimately, that's what this recipe was about.     

Ease of Preparation:   7 out of 10.   Although it takes a little time to make, it's a fairly simple, straightforward recipe to make.   

Will It Freezer Meal?   Dorie's recipe calls for you to make double the herb butter and save half for later - and yes, that herb butter will freeze just fine.   I make compound butters and freeze all the time to use up fresh herbs that may otherwise go to waste.   You could also prep the bird by stuffing the butter under the skin and then freezing it.  I would probably more likely do that with chicken legs rather than a whole chicken.   Then just thaw and pop right into the oven to roast.