OR: How I stopped worrying and learned to love the bom– uh. Being in the kitchen. How I stopped worrying and learned to love being in the kitchen. Yep.
Get you a graniteware roasting pan. The kind that looks like you could pop a baby in the oven, because you’re gonna stuff two hens in that thing, plus a bunch of veg so you need the space. Mine’s from my sainted Polish gramma, who lived in her kitchen, her pool, and her praying chair. (Rock on, Maxine; you were a badass.) You can also find these in tag sales across the country, if you can’t find ’em on Amazon. Even if it’s got some chips, so long as it isn’t rusted through the bottom, you’re good.
Next, get you some hens. One excessively massive, nigh-steroidal hen, or a coupla reasonably sized ones. You’re looking for 7-10lbs(3-9kg) birdweight, total, after clean and pluck. If they’ve come with giblets, so much the better.
Preheat your oven to ‘ripping hot’ — 500F/260C/gas mark 10. Arrange the racks so you’ll be able to fit the roasting pan on the bottom one.
Lay a bunch of old, wilty veg in the bottom of the roasting pan. Those who are used to this method of roasting often have a ziplock in the freezer full of the leftover cut bits from previous meals. Soups, roasts, salads, whatnot. Those dried out baby carrots ain’t nobody gonna dip in the hummus that’s separated since last month and you oughta throw away. Any leftover bit of veg that hasn’t gone off yet, really, except for maybe peppers and summer squash. They just get bitter. If you DON’T have a bag of roasting veg ready, don’t worry: new works just as good.
Give everything that wasn’t already washed a good scrub to get rid of grit, chunk everything up, and whack it all into the pan. You don’t wanna be able to see the bottom. Don’t bother getting any smaller than 1/2 to 1/3 the size of a carrot. You’re making a bed for the hens to lay on, and it’ll be pretty enough without the fuss.
In mine, I like carrots, celery (especially the leaves!), onion (EVERY kind of onion, honestly, skin and all, including the greens of leeks), tomatoes, apples, oranges, lemons, and grapes.
Now, salmonella’s a bitch, and she’ll have you laid up good and miserable for a few days at best, so when dealing with your hens, gloves are absolutely a game changer. Keeps bacteria out from under your fingernails and out of any tiny cuts or winter-chapped hands. If you don’t have them or don’t like them, don’t worry about it — just wash well before and after touching the bird(s), and keep your fingers outta your damn face.
Some folks dry off the bird, to get the skin crispy, but I promise it isn’t actually necessary with this method. Lay her down on the veg, long way if she’s solo, tits up, wings tucked under her hips and lower back like she’s in a Jane Fonda workout video doing the bicycle. If you’ve got two, lay them crosswise, still tits up, but one with her feet in one direction, and the other with her feet in the OTHER direction. Here’s a shitty MSPaint drawing in case you’re a visual learner:
Make sense? Excellent. If you have giblets, take ’em outta the paper and stuff ’em in/around/near the bird(s). Now, once you’ve got your bird(s) all set, you’re going to pour a hefty glug of neutral oil all over the face-up skin. Get it good and shiny. You’re going to use a solid 1/3 of a cup at least, so just commit.
Next, coat the skin with a liberal dusting of Lawry’s seasoning salt. (If you haven’t got that, use a mix of salt, garlic and onion powders, paprika, turmeric, sugar, and if you can find it, a healthy dash of MSG, in the following ratio: 4:1:1:2:1:1(:1).) Like, coat it. No, more than that. More.
More.
C’mon now, pretend you’ve got tastebuds, no heart conditions, and you know what spices are for.
There we go.
Add in a palmful of peppercorns, 5-6 cloves of peeled garlic, and a cinnamon stick, if you’ve got one.
Pop the lid on the roasting pan, whack it in the oven for 45 minutes, then turn it 180 degrees, reduce the heat to 450F/230C/Gas mark 8, and leave it for another 30. Take the lid off for the last 10-15 if you prefer your skin all but blackened.
Take it out and admire a job well done.
Ta-fucking-da, you have perfectly roasted chicken!
Once you’ve stripped the meat off the bird for eating in whatever fashion you love best (I like to eat it with homemade mac and cheese and some kind of greens or green veg, then save some for soup!), toss its carcass and everything from that roasting pan into a stockpot. (I use a 16qt bc I’m a kitchenwitch, but go with what you’ve got.)
Cover everything with enough water to submerge the bird and its bedding by a good 2 inches. Throw in a handful of fresh herbs like you’re fucking off to Scarborough Fair (parsley, saaaage, rose-ma-ry-and-thyyyyyyme) plus some good fresh bay leaves. (FRESH, you hear me??? Throw away those sad grey monstrosities you’ve got languishing in a McCormick jar from 1985 and get you some bright-ass GREEN and FRESH bay leaves from the produce department! They’re three dollars for a gigantic handful and you can freeze what you don’t use — but use them in EVERYTHING.)
Put the cover on the pot and turn it up to boil. Once it’s boiling, take the lid off and let it reduce until you’ve got maybe a gallon of liquid left. (If you started in a small-ass pot that only got you a gallon or less of liquid to BEGIN with, leave the lid ON for an hour, then reduce til you’ve lost about 1/3 of what you had.)
Strain everything out. I like to start by pulling out anything I can get easily with tongs, then I pour it through a big ole colander. Then I pour it through a fine mesh sieve. There’s still gonna be bits and sediment, but there’s another step, so don’t fuckin worry about it, alright?
Thank it for its service, and then chuck all that weird bony slop in the bin. Reserve any intact wishbones as you like. If you’ve been in my kitchen, you’ve seen my collection of wishes.
I’ve roasted a lot of chickens.
Let the strained stock cool down so you’re not gonna scald the shit outta yourself while working with it, preferably in a fridge if you can help it, and skim off the fat BUT DO NOT CHUCK IT, OKAY? God, this obsession with low-fat nonsense is actually bad for your brain. You know what your brain is? Electric fat. No shit. It’s a computer made of electric fat. The myelin sheath (made of fat) on your nerve cells is like the insulation around a copper wire. Imagine wiring your house without insulation around any of the wires. Your lights wouldn’t work AND your house would be on fucking fire. Why would you do that to your house? Why would you do that to your brain? Eat fat. It’s good for your brain.
So.
When the stock is cooler, and the fat’s on the surface, skim it all off and put it in a different container. Pour the rest of it (or scoop, bc it might be jelly, if you left it overnight in the fridge. That’s a property of stock with a high collagen content. Good for what ails ya. Especially if what ails you is a lack of collagen. People will tell you it’s good for your hair and skin and nails — and it might be! Who knows? — but what it’s especially good for is mouthfeel and fullness. Soup made from stock with a high collagen content feels silkier on the tongue, and fills the belly.) into containers you can either pressure-can or freeze. Or use it right away because you really need soup right now. Either way, when you’re pouring or scooping, you can leave the sediment on the very bottom. It’s not bad for you or anything, but sometimes it can feel gritty, no matter how well you washed/strained everything.
Now you’ve got stock! It might need more salt, but it can be used for just about anything you need chicken stock/broth for.
Lastly — the fat. This is a seasoned schmaltz, absolutely perfect for sautéing veg, starting a roux, or if you wanted to come full circle, you use it to make yourself some matzoh balls, because if you do, you’re gonna make yourself the best goddamned soup you’ve ever eaten.
If you prefer matzoh balls that float (a little bit of a no-no on Passover, so I hear, but my grandmother and great grandmother cooked, served, and ate at plenty a Seder and didn’t give a shit so long as people were full), read on. For ones that sink, skip down a ways.
FLOATERS:
1 cup matzo meal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 t sea salt
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t onion powder
1/4 1 white pepper
4 large eggs
1/4 cup schmaltz
1 tablespoon minced fresh dill or parsley (optional)
SINKERS:
1 cup matzo meal
1/4 t salt
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t onion powder
1/4 t white pepper
3 large eggs
2 T schmaltz
1 tablespoon minced fresh dill or parsley (optional)
Pick one recipe — or pick both; it’s your kitchen, what the hell do I know?
Most importantly, get you some of that chicken stock going (about 5 quarts or so, so you will want a very, very large pot, 6+ quarts so you’re not sloshing this all over) or if you want to save all the chicken stock for the soup itself (a good deal of it is absorbed into the balls) then you can use tinned broth, bouillon, or at the very very least, decently salted water.
Don’t use plain water; you’ll just get watery, soggy, drowned-ass bread balls. Nobody wants that.
Start the liquid boiling in that very very large pot.
Mix all the dry in one bowl. Mix all the wet in another. (You gotta keep ’em separated) Then mix it alllll together and plonk it in the fridge for half an hour. If you’re gonna plonk it longer, cover it with something like clingfilm or have it in Tupperware, etc.
Once the matzoh’s good and hydrated, get rolling. Some folks use wet hands, some use dry, some oil, some glove — you’re gonna have to see what works for you. Use a little scooper or a spoon to get about a walnut’s worth (2T) of the dough and roll it into a ball. If everything crumbles apart, add a little bit of water to the bowl, re-stir, and try again. Work quickly and re-chill everything so your balls don’t lose their shape.
Reduce your heat and carefully put the balls down into the broth (use a skimmer, a wok spider, or a ladle, so you don’t burn the shit outta yourself) and then make sure the pot stays at a decent simmer. NO MORE BOILING. You just want a simmer. Anything more than that, and you’ll shake your balls apart.
Plonk the cover on that fucker and set a timer for 30 minutes.
Do not lift that lid. Do not.
DO. NOT.
Go do something else! Clean up the big mess you’ve made in your kitchen. Or pour yourself a glass of something and put your feet up. Whatever makes more sense.
Around the 30 minute mark, check in and see if your balls are done — floaters should have expanded nearly 2-3x their original size, while sinkers will only expand a little bit, and will probably float some. Give everything a good stir so the balls aren’t stuck to the pot or one another, put the lid back on for another 15-20 min.
If you don’t know in you’re heart when they’re done, you can check. Just cut one in half with a knife. If they’re done, they hold their shape and are the same color outside as they are in the center. If they’re darker in the middle, they’re not quite done. Bonus, though, you can eat this one!
The balls should be carefully taken out of the pot and set aside for serving — don’t store them in the broth or they’ll just fall to pieces.
The broth itself can be used to make the actual soup — diced carrot, celery, and onion can get sauteed in schmaltz, and once they’re glossy and beginning to soften, add them to the broth and simmer til they’re soft. Add some of that leftover chicken, if you like. (You’d like, I promise.)
Add the matzoh balls back in.
Serve in big bowls with big spoons, and top it all with chopped fresh parsley and dill.
Now you’ve had roast chicken, soup stock, schmaltz, matzoh balls, and matzoh ball soup, and your whole house will smell incredible, and you’ll feel warm and full. Invite friends over and share. Tell them how to make it. Make it with them. Nothing quite like cooking and eating with friends.
Enjoy!