Who is the family chicken champion? The smart money is on my mom. And my dashing husband can do some serious damage to a bird when he puts his mind to it. There is, however, a young pretender in our midst, as evidenced by Ernie’s plate after dinner pictured above.
Both wings, both drumsticks, and half a breast. Devoured. Systematically. And the boy gnaws on those bones. He crunches into the wing tips, and rips charred skin with his teeth. He picks out stubborn bits of meat with his fingers and pulls joints open in search of hidden morsels.
What inspired such fervent eating by Ernie? Roast chicken with arugula bread salad a la Zuni Cafe.
And let me tell you, I put my “you can do anything you want with a properly raised chicken” theory to the test and cooked the be-jesus out of that Clark Summit Farms bird. What happened is the chicken was done so I took it out of the oven, turned the oven off, and headed out to pick up Ernie from school. When I came home I couldn’t find the chicken. Where could I have put it? Surely nowhere outside of the kitchen. But where was it? My kitchen is pretty small. Not a lot of places to hide a hot, cooked chicken. An in-depth search revealed that I had left it in the oven. The turned-off but still plenty hot oven. For an extra 45 minutes. Oh my, I thought, this won’t be good.
Internets, it could not have been more delicious and tender and juicy.
Let it be known: well raised + pre-salting = chicken magic.
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