I tend to get caught up on certain cook book authors, and for the past month it has been all about Heston Blumenthal. Head chef at the Fat Duck in the U.K., his cookbook In Search of Perfection has been fostering idea after crazy idea. In a Serious Eats article, we wrote about cooking a pizza on the bottom of a cast iron skillet, to great success. The best part is that his mad-cap search for perfection is, except for a few mentions of blowtorches, essentially plausible at home. That's when I came to the roast chicken section.
A raw chicken is about 80 per cent water. Cooking it is basically a battle to hang on to some of that moisture, so that you end up with a deliciously succulent bird. In this recipe, two techniques help achieve that aim: brining and low-temperature cooking.
Brining is something I've tried before and completely recommend. But how low is the low-temperature cooking? I'd just done that a few months ago at 250 degrees. But apparently that wasn't even close to what Heston wanted. The bird is done at 140, so he said to set the temperature there and cook it for a long time. Here's the idea: the bird is supposed to be done cooking when it reaches 140. So put it in environment at that temperature, and wait until it gets there.
It might sound all well and good, but that's a good 60 degrees below where my oven can go. I thought I was going to have to forget it until I came across the one instrument that I'd never considered before. The crock-pot. Here was something specifically designed to cook foods for a long time at a low temperature. Would it work?
The "hot" setting was way too hot, and even "low" maintained a temperature far above what I needed. So then I had to turn to the "keep warm" setting--you know, the one your turn to after the food is done. And like some destined fate, when I tested the temperature of the setting it came out exactly to 140. It was time to start.
Problems started immediately thereafter. Heston likes to plunge his bird in boiling water for 30 seconds to help get a crisper skin, the same method that helps those ducks in Chinatown windows look so crackly. But I haven't a pot near that big. My biggest one would quickly lose it's boil if I stuck a three and half pound bird in. I also didn't brine the bird. It's a hassle, and I wanted to see what this method would be like with just the slow cooking.
The biggest problem, however, was how Heston wanted to cook the skin. After the bird had cooked for 5 hours, the skin looks pale and gross, and needs some really high heat to make it look appetizing, not to mention crackly and tasty, the whole point of roast chicken. He advised letting it sit for an hour, and then sauteing the whole thing in a very hot pan to crisp the skin. Unfortunately, sauteing a whole bird is about as easy as it sounds, and no where near comprehensive. Blotches of burned skin appear next to untouched flesh. I don't doubt that it can be done, but it's really hard and not worth it. The pan was so hot the oil splattered violently when the chicken went in. I had to use a pan top as a shield to protect my own skin. It could not have gone worse.
But the meat? Absolute perfection. It was without a doubt the best chicken flavor I'd ever achieved. It was juicy, full flavored, and weirdly rich. After 5 hours in the crock pot I expected there to be all these juices floating in the bottom, but there was maybe a tablespoon--they all stay in the bird. He says that you can't even make a sauce out of the drippings because there won't be enough. He thinks it's better to have a chicken full of those juices. I happen to agree with him.
It's just that pesky skin, which, actually, I have some ideas about. More to come in a later post.
Heston's Ultra-Slow Chicken
- 1 Chicken
- 3 tablespoons Canola Oil
Adapted from Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection
**In response to some questions about how sanitary this method is, I've included a preliminary boiling step. Heston had this in his original recipe, and I just chose not to include it because I didn't have a pot big enough. I was a little more reckless back then. Anyway, he believes this gets rid of any bacteria issues you may have.
Bring a large pot of water to boil, and toss the chicken in. Boil for about 30 seconds. Then remove the bird.
Meanwhile, set the crock-pot to the "keep warm" setting and wait until it hits 140 degrees. This might be different on other models, so wing it. If it's too hot, try to crack the lid open a tad. If too cold, place aluminum foil over the opening, and then place the lid on top.
Set the chicken inside, cover, and cook until the internal temperature reaches 140, anywhere from 4-6 hours. Remove the bird and let sit for 30 minutes to an hour. Set an iron skillet over high heat for 10 minutes. Add 3 tablespoons of Canola oil and when it starts to smoke, add the chicken. How best to grip it is beyond me. I had a big pair of tongs that helped me rotate it until it looked like I'd browned whatever skin I could.
Slice up immediately and eat.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Blowtorch?
Why not have pre-heat the broiler and throw it in for 3 minutes or so?
The team at The Paupered Chef is nothing if not adventurous! You seem to continually take on strange and/or daunting cooking challenges. I think I'm sometimes too ready to go for a sure thing when trying something new.
Glad the chicken was moist and delicious, but we also eat with our eyes. I think I would need the crisp, golden skin to consider my bird a success.
Sounds awesome – how bout a super quick deep-fry after the initial crockpot cookery?
Hey guys, great food blog.
FYI, this adventure sounds very similar to suisse vide cooking. Although they do it in water baths and in anearobic environments (food fully sealed plastic).
In my experience, this is a good way to cook certain meats, and you'll find recipies that reccommend it too.
In fact, eye of round roasts (the kind with the white ring of fat round them) are good like this, but I find it's better to spike the oven to 550, stick the roast in, shut the oven off and come back 4 hours later. Gives some browning which increases the flavor.
However, be careful, especially with poultry. Cooking this way leaves the chicken in the "danger-zone" temp range where bacteria (eg, salmonella) grow fastests and bestest for a long time.
Normal cooking temps don't leave meat in the "danger-zone" for longer than 10's of minutes, where this type of cooking leaves the meat in the range for hours.
I also would not try this with say a whole sea-bass or anything like that either, but you may be more adventurous than I.
-dr
My lowest oven setting is 170 degrees farenheit. I brined the bird for twelve hours and refrigerated him/her uncovered for four hours. I cooked the bird for five hours to reach an internal temperature of 150 degrees. I let the bird rest for one hour loosely covered with foil. I carved the chicken into eight pieces and sauteed the pieces skin side down in very hot oil for a few minutes to brown the pieces. It was perfect – moist, flavorful, with nicely browned skin.
How about cutting the bird in sections after the crock pot shvitz and sauteing the sections?
This is a cool idea – i'll try this but before i place the bird in the crock i'll butterfly the chicken, removing the back bone and the breast bone. when it comes out of the crock, parting a butterflied bird into 4 pieces (2 breast/wing combos and 2 thigh/leg combos) is easy. from there, just place them on a sheet pan under the broiler for 2 minutes and they'll brown up perfectly…
All these things sounds so long to me when usually by the time the chicken is done roasting I'm salivating and not in the mood to do more work than whipping up a nice sauce from the drippings. What if you remove the wishbone before roasting and loosen leg joints : after the 170 degree roast described by MJR pull out the bird, rev up the broiler to defcon five and while its getting hot butterfly the chicken skin side up obviously. Put it under the heat scary close and watch how long till it browns. I know this might sound sacrilege but doesnt cornstarch make things crispy ? Could you make a melted butter/cornstarch basting liquid, baste it quick THEN put it under the broiler? Quick brown crunch? I'm going to try it.
To crisp the skin, place it on a hot BBQ grill for less than 5 minutes. Beats blowtorch, or grease fires/burns
I am SUPER concerned about the food safety issue that this procedure creates, since the cooking time is only enough to get the product UP TO 140F. According to USDA guidelines, you need to HOLD the product at that this temperature for a LONG time once it has HIT 140F. This is the basis of the 72 hour short ribs popularized by chefs like Michel Richard.
However, what I DO NOT know is whether the brining process will help to make the chicken more “food safe” by chemically killing the “bad guys” what would otherwise get you sick. Does anyone have any expert information about this? If I find anything I’ll let you know.
Either way, brining will definitely give a better flavor to the bird and you’ll get a “better” (subjective) texture in the finished product.
Anyone try a vacuum-marinading machine? They are not that expensive and work really well, even the home models!
I’ve recently begun playing with slow roasting and came across this website during my hunt to learn if I’m crazy for doing this to chicken.
The thought came to me that my cavernous oven was wasted on putting one thing into it at a time. So with a future pulled pork delight tucked into the soapstone pot within, I placed two seasoned (but unbrined) whole chickens (breast side down) onto a rack and roasting pan, added a little stock and leftover wine into the bottom of the pan and let everything alone at 250 for about, I don’t know, two hours. Opened the oven, turned the chickens breast sides up and closed the oven. Left everything alone again for, I don’t know, another hour or two. The meat thermometer leapt to 180 without hesitation, so I am confident (and a few attempts have shown so far, knock wood) that there were no bacteria issues.
Yes, the chickens were not roasty-golden. But they were tender, juicy and delicious.
This is my favorite part of the process: Once cooled sufficiently, I left one chicken whole, cut the other into parts, wrapped pieces well with wax paper, put the pieces into a suitable plastic bin with an old, clean dish towel on the bottom (to absorb excess moisture in the freezer compartment and protect against freezer burn), and froze it all. (Pulled pork, come to mama.)
Instead of buying, freezing, thawing raw chicken (thinking ahead, planning ahead, doing ahead, standing over the stove to brown this and roast that), I pull suitable parts from the freeze to use for pizzas, tacos, chicken salads, chicken with pasta in cream sauce, chicken and mushrooms Provencal (run it under the broiler for a moment before serving until golden), chicken this, chicken that. Company’s coming? I’m ready.
“Green” use of the oven, I don’t know. Hours on a low temp is still hours of fuel use. But it is green that many multiple meals are being prepared at once. Green use of time, as something that be quickly pulled together on a whim. Green use of finances: bought on sale and fewer trips for take-out.
– Thanks for the platform!
Andy Mayeshiba: I understand the concern. I think I was a little reckless when I did this post years ago. Heston recommends boiling the chicken for about 30 seconds to kill anything that could potentially be a probably and then cooking. I didn’t have a pot big enough to do this, so I left it out. But now I’ve added this to the instructions to make the whole thing a little more sanitary.
I am trying pork ribs – boiled them about 5 minutes and then put into crockpot on warm with BBQ sauce. After temperature climbed back above 140 F, I have turned crockpot to warm…. we’ll see.
BTW, 5 minutes boiling may be way too much as the meat became rigid after that time. And I would think the ideas is to keep the meat flexible and tender.
CORRECTION***
I am trying pork ribs – boiled them about 5 minutes and then put into crockpot on LOW with BBQ sauce. After temperature climbed back above 140 F, I have turned crockpot to warm…. we’ll see.
BTW, 5 minutes boiling may be way too much as the meat became rigid after that time. And I would think the ideas is to keep the meat flexible and tender.
I tried this recipe from Heston’s book as well. It was the best roast chicken I’ve ever had, but I had a few problems along the way…
My biggest issue was that the core temperature didn’t hit “cooked” until 8hrs after it was supposed to be on the table. So we ended up having roast chicken for breakfast
The skin on mine turned out quite nicely, but I managed to squish my finger in the tongs while doing so.
I’ve been looking the crock pot for sous-vide, the temperature on mine is about right on low; but I’m not convinced the temperature is stable enough.