Roasting the right chicken the right way

It seems like every authoritative all-encompassing cookbook, the kind with Basics or Principles or Everything in the title, has a wistful and solemn tribute to roast chicken tucked somewhere between its chapters. It's a barometer dish by which a cook's overall technique can be evaluated. And when asked what their last meal on earth would be, a fair number of famous chefs are likely to choose something simple and wholesome, like a good chicken, roasted with herbs and served without ornament.

Poultry, like all varieties of meat, used to be much more expensive, because it was primarily raised on family-owned farms, small scale operations with conditions more suited to Norman Rockwell paintings than to value supermarkets. Chickens ate bugs, and ran around outside, just like the South Asian junglefowl from which they descended thousands of years ago.

Things have certainly changed. My copy of the Gold Cook Book, written by Louis P. De Gouy and published in 1947, raves on about the technological 'advances' that were dramatically changing our relationship with Gallus domesticus. Seen now through the lens of hindsight, his enthusiasm is a bit unsettling:

About fifteen years ago, before man could control vitamin D, chickens had to have plenty of sunshine to soak up an abundance of the lifegiving vitamin. When confined to their coops and shut off from the sun, they would die. But, when we conquered vitamin D and could feed it to chickens in cod liver oil and other products mixed with their food, it opened up a vast new streamlined way of producing eggs, called the battery method...Their contentment can be measured by the fact that battery hens produce 15 per cent more eggs than their less civilized sisters who live on the range...Recently the chemical, Colchicine, was discovered to speed the growth of baby chicks, while still another scientific approach to better and speedier breeding of poultry has been artificial insemination. There is no telling where all these fantastic experiments will lead us, but the fact seems to be, as far as science is concerned, that a chicken makes a good guinea pig!

Yeah, and I've also heard great new things about this thing called asbestos. Three cheers for progress!

Today, over 60 years later, we eat more than 9 billion chickens a year in the United States, most of those raised in battery farms with clipped beaks, pumped with growth hormones to make them busty, and antibiotics to keep the germs of confinement at bay. Their lives are short, dark and cramped, and as a result, chicken is no longer a luxury, but rather the stuff of value menus, sold to be eaten with a level of conscientiousness and self-awareness commensurate with the battery farmer who used science to boost his bottom line. We've gone from chicken dinner to chicken fries.

Want to bring back the happy bug-eaters? Want chicken to be revered and special, to be enjoyed and savored, to satisfy both belly and conscience? So do I.

There are many arguments into which I won't delve right now regarding what free-range means and what it should mean. Regulations are only as good as their worst loopholes, and unfortunately, current laws regulating food labeling still have some large ones to close. But just because we still don't have federal laws that mandate humane treatment of chickens, that doesn't mean there aren't old-fashioned happy chickens out there to be found.

I know that when I look for chicken, I feel confident about a few particular producers. Hoffman Game Birds is top of the list, but hard to come by. Fulton Valley Farms, in Fulton, California, is another top-notch producer. So for today's slow Sunday meal, I picked up a couple of little Fulton Valley chickens, weighing in at just 2.3 kg total (that's 5 pounds for two whole birds), and with some very basic preparation, made them into a lovely little roast.

Ingredients
Two small chickens, 1 to 1.5 kg each
225 grams of butter (about 2 sticks)
Two large cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
Assortment of fresh herbs (I grabbed some thyme, oregano and sage from the garden)
Two heavy pinches of salt (chunky grey sea salt works well here)
A few crunches of black pepper
A glug of white wine or white wine vinegar

Now there are many fancier ways to roast a bird, but I like to go the simple route, because I want to taste the chicken above all else. I'm also thinking forward a bit, and want my leftovers to be versatile; the remnants from these birds could go into soup, a curry, a taco, or a salad, and won't harbor twinges of spices that might not play well with others.

Bring the oven up to Blazing, aka 200C or 400F. Now take care of the prep.

Chop the herbs, then crush and chop the garlic. Take these smelly friends and introduce them to the butter. If your butter just came from the fridge, you'll need to get your hands involved to get things soft enough to make a roughly integrated herb butter.

Now you'll need to give your birds a very intimate massage. Rub half of the herb butter on the outside, and put the rest inside. If your chicken is big enough to accomodate, feel free to make a little cut in the skin and put the butter between the flesh and the skin; this will guarantee crispy skin in the end. Let's get the chickens ready for the heat. A roasting pan would be ideal, but anything flat with a little depth will do. Put your passengers onto the conveyance of your choice, and deliver them to the oven.

Twenty minutes later, interrupt them briefly to give them a little baste with a brush or a carefully wielded spoon. Pour the white wine in, taking care not to pour onto the chickens themselves. Drop the heat down to 175C or 350F, and let them enjoy the heat for another 30 minutes. Now, crack the oven door open just a bit for some slow ventilation, and leave it that way with the oven turned off, for another 20 minutes.

Bring them out, check to make sure the juices run clear, and allow to rest for awhile. Presto - you've got roast chicken. It wasn't hard to do, and didn't take very long!

The advantage of using small chickens? They cook before their skin burns.

In addition to the delicious peace of mind that comes from roasting an honestly-raised chicken, you've also got a bonus that you'll never find with a chicken fry - the bulk of ingredients needed to make world-class stock. Stay tuned..