fryers and roasters

Roast chicken is one of my favorite home cooked meals. As such, it makes a regular appearance at the dinner table -- and the blog. I'll take this opportunity to link a fantastic video of Thomas Keller demonstrating how to prepare a roasted chicken. Pretty cool having the most respected chef in the US show you how to truss a bird! Now if only I knew how to tie a slip-knot...

A few important things Keller doesn't discuss in this video. First, using a small "fryer" chicken is a far better idea than roasting a larger "roaster" chicken..Fryers are simply younger chickens. As a result they're smaller and more tender. They usually weigh three pounds, while roasters can weigh up six pounds or more. A fryer should be sufficient for a family of four. If you need to feed more people, just cook two fryers.

Second, drying the skin of the chicken before you cook it is a very good idea. Air drying in the fridge for a few hours before tempering the chicken is one option. If you don't have time for that, just make sure to really dry the exterior of the chicken with paper towels.

Finally, as with any meat that's not brined, salt it right before you cook it. If you salt too early (like when you first pull it out of the fridge), the salt will draw out the moisture from the meat. With a roast chicken, that will prevent you from achieving that perfect crisp skin and will result in a drier chicken. Boooo!!!

spring

It's actually practically summer here in Atlanta, but I'm not ready to let go of spring just yet. On the menu tonight - simple roasted trout and asparagus, paired with a fresh fennel salad. All these flavors go together wonderfully. I used the broiler and a touch of olive oil to cook the fish, avoiding the mess that usually occurs when you roast whole fish (since the fish cooks from the top and not the bottom). The asparagus cooked in the same amount of time as the fish (20min). And the fennel was sliced super thin and dressed with lemon and olive oil. Salt and pepper on everything and dinner's ready!

chops

Not all pork chops are created equal. Several of my devoted readers have far more experience with this than I do, and as always, plenty of others have written about this on the internet. In fact I found a pretty good description of all the different cuts here. I'll let you read that if you want, but in the meantime here are a few basic rules to ensure you get a perfectly cooked chop at home.

1. Fat is good - very good. Fat provides flavor and moisture. It'll reduce the likelihood of overcooking and will help you get a nice crust on your chop. Look for a well marbled cut, usually from the end of the loin closest to the shoulder - the blade chop or blade loin. This is typically a cheaper cut anyway. The completely lean pink pork chops will invariably be dry. If you are watching your weight, just eat less of it, but at least this way you make it count!

2. Salt is good. You can brine your chop or roast, but then its hard to achieve a nice exterior crust. In my opinion its better to salt immediately before you cook the meat. Be generous with the salt, though if you salt the chop too early, the salt will draw the moisture out of the chop and you'll get a drier chop and find it harder to get a nice crust.

3. Bones are good. Bones add flavor. That's why we make stock out of them. They also help prevent overcooking. Boneless chops are not the end of the world, but if you have a choice, bone-in will yield a better tasting chop.

4. Thick is good. Do not buy those paper thin chops. That's a recipe for disaster, they'll be dry before you know it. A nice thick 1.5"-2" chop is perfect. If that's too much for one person, slice it later and give each person part of a chop. A thicker chop gives you more control over the internal temperature of the meat.

5. Bring your chop to room temperature before cooking it. Let it sit out of the fridge for up to an hour. This makes it easier to cook it through properly without having to burn the outside. If you have flies at your house, you'll probably want it to be covered!

6. Most good restaurants will cook the chops on a hot skillet with a fat to get a crispy salty golden exterior and then finish it in a 400-450F oven until it reaches the desired doneness.This is a great way to cook chops, but you might want to open the windows if you don't have a commercial grade vent. You don't need the skillet to be smoking, in fact i find that a medium hot to hot pan is perfect. Just don't touch the chop until its crisp. You can use a non-stick skillet, but you'll get better results with a stainless steel or cast iron skillet.

7. The wonderful USDA recommends cooking pork to 160F. This will result in terribly dry meat. Use a thermometer and pull your meat when the center (or close to the bone if it's bone in) reads 135F.

8. Resting the meat after cooking is critical. After you pull it off the heat, let it rest 10 minutes. The chop will continue to cook to about 145F on its own. The meat will also be more likely to retain its juices once you cut into it. You'll get a slightly pink interior that is juicy and flavorful that way.

Enjoy!

sourdough

Using the no-knead bread recipe has really significantly increased my interest in making good home-made bread. The major revelation was that baking the bread in a dutch oven results in an amazing crust. The fact that you don't have to knead the dough... well that simplifies the process somewhat, but truth be told, I actually enjoy kneading dough once in a while. But while the crust is as good as any you’ll find, the flavor of the crumb remains limited by the use of commercial bakers yeast. The yeast you buy in stores certainly helps the dough rise and results in a reasonably light crumb, but despite 20 hours of proofing, the flavor just doesn’t live up to what you expect when you cut through the crust. 

I didn’t use to enjoy San Francisco sourdough all that much. It’s certainly very different from the light sweet crumb of French baguettes. However, after living in the Bay Area a few years, I began to really enjoy the complexity sourdough bread adds to any meal, sandwich, or snack. As I searched for ways to improve the flavor of my breads, it became clear that making my own sourdough starter was probably the easiest way to add substantial flavor to my bread.

There are thousands of types of yeast. But the stuff you buy in supermarkets is always the same strain, regardless of the brand you buy or whether it's dried or in cake form. It gives a fast, predictable rise, but is lacking in flavor. All other bread yeasts are usually called sourdoughs. So what exactly is sourdough? In short, a sourdough starter actually consists of two separate organisms. There is the yeast which gives the bread its puff. Then there is the lactobacilli, which converts sugars into lactic acid and gives the bread all of its delicious sour flavor.

I won’t go through a step by step description of how to make a starter. Suffice it to say that I followed these instructions, and used King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat Flour and tap water. That’s it, just two ingredients. The goal of the process is to grow the yeast and lactobacilli that is naturally occurring in the flour into something that’s strong enough to lift and flavor bread. It is not to capture wild yeast from the air in your kitchen, though that may happen. Using organic whole wheat flour is key, because if you use bleached, processed white flour, it won't contain the natural yeasts and lactobacilli you are trying to harvest. The process took me about two weeks, feeding the starter twice a day with flour and water. Your starter is ready when it doubles in size between feedings and smells like your might expect sourdough starter to smell like (like sourdough!).  Since it’s doubling in size every twelve hours or so, you have to chuck half of it away before feeding it more flour and water. Otherwise you'll have enough starter to fill an Olympic-sized pool after a week. When it’s strong enough, you simply use some of the starter where you would normally use yeast. One cup of starter is roughly equivalent to one packet of yeast.

With my bubbling starter in hand I tried my no-knead recipe once again. As you can see it looks great, and lo and behold it actually has that sour flavor I was after. Oh and that crust... Perfect. Now I just need to work on not eating an entire loaf in one day! As for the starter, it stays semi-dormant in the fridge, slowly developing more flavor until I'm ready to use it again.