Roasting
Holy good sweet Lord in heaven, or Buddha, or Muhammad, or Great Pumpkin... well, good sweet whatever. Go out, buy yourself a roaster chicken (3-4lbs), take that sucker and brine it in a salt/sugar solution (enough water to submerge the chick, and 1 cup kosher salt and some sugar up to about 1 cup, make sure the solution is well mixed, like, super well mixed) and let it chill out in the brine for an hour. While that's doing it's thing (it's called osmosis), make a compound butter with 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter, some herbs (I used basil and thyme), garlic (I used 2 cloves) and some dijon mustard (a compound butter is when you take butter and mix a bunch of crap into it. It's yummy). Also cut 3-4 large baker potatoes (the ones labeled Idaho) and cut them somewheres between 1/4 and 1/8 inch thick. Mix them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Line your broiler pan with tinfoil, and put the potatoes in there, then... oh. I forgot a step with the chicken, you gots to butterfly it. That means you're going to cut it's backbone out. No, I mean it. Take a sharp knife (more dangerous) or kitchen sheers (less dangerous, but more dangerous in the germ/contamination way -- make sure you can take your scissors apart to clean them afterwards if you use kitchen sheers) and cut the backbone out (not the side of the bird with the breast -- if the legs are up like you're cooking it normally, it's the down side. Also, depending on the bird, you might have to break the breastbone to make it lie flat. Do that too.). Now that the birds been in the fridge (you did put it in the fridge, right?) for at least an hour (probably no more than like, 2 or 3 -- I did about 1 and a half), take it off and rinse it off. You're rinsing off the sugar, you don't want it to burn in the oven. Oh, speaking of the oven, you did turn it to 500 degrees, right? Yes, 500 degrees. Just do it. Anyways, rinse off the bird, and put it on the top part of the broiler pan, now separate the skin from the meat, and smoosh the compound butter under the skin. All over the bird... the breast legs and thighs. Take some canola oil and rub the outside of the skin with it, and put the whole thing in your scorching hot oven for 20 minutes. Turn the thing around and close the door for another 20 minutes.
Take the bird off the pan, put it somewhere to rest for 15-20, and get the potatoes out of the bottom. Now, eat the best damn chicken you've ever had. Damn was that good. No, really. Make it, it's easy and frickin' wonderful.
Now I have to go get some stuff done.
-Jon
P.S. I should mention that I got this recipe from America's Test Kitchen. Not a good show, but every once in a while they have a good recipe.