Taming's Further Backyard Adventures
I've been busily roasting all sorts of coffees, making some roasts in my bread machine, and others in my iRoast-2. I'm finding that apart from the advantage of being able to roast 3/4 of a pound of beans at once in my bread machine, I am liking the experience of getting closer to the roast as I do this odd thing.
I have learned that by changing the distance between the beans and the heat gun, I can have a much greater degree of control over the time it takes to reach first crack, and the time between cracks. At this sort of thing impacts the outcome of the roast, this translates into better coffee.
I have also been making good use of the electric smoker our neighbours lent us, though I gotta tell you, city patios were probably never designed to do these odd things. I feel sorta country, or trailer parky, as I take my adventures in out-of-kitchen cooking into the yard. If I start making noises about making lye soap, someone, please stop me.
This is a build-up to my pictorial display of smoking/roasting goodness. Today's meat is a honkin' big organic chicken, purchased at our local Farmer's Market. As you read what I have done with this poor bird, please remember that I have an illness that expresses itself in the need to make easy things complex. I also have lots of time on my hands.
Besides, I'm a sucker for cooking toys.
Taming's Guide to Making Roast Chicken
Into a 2-4 Day Long Affair
- Buy a nice plump chicken or roasting hen. The easy way to do it is to go to the grocery store, pick one up that has already been roasted, hand the checker the money, and be done with it. The next easiest way is to buy what passes for fresh chicken at the same store, and make it in the usual way. Taming's way is to wait until the Saturday that the chicken guy is scheduled to be at the Farmer's Market, get into the back of his truck, and pick one of his fresh killed, organic, free range, birds yourself. Heck, buy five of them and watch everyone laugh as you try to figure out how exactly smallish you are going to haul 12 kilos of fresh killed chickens all the way to your car. Don't think about the production awaiting you once you get them home and have to get them packaged properly for the freezer.
- Schedule your meal well in advance. If you are starting, as I did today, with a 2.5 kilo frozen chicken, you will want to put the poor dead thing in the fridge four days before the meal. This is to allow 2 full days for defrosting. Trust me, it takes that long. If you are smart, have the chicken sitting in a pan or you will have to add cleaning the fridge (oh ick, watery chicken blood) to your to-do list.
- Two days before chicken day, when the bird is completely defrosted, plop the bird in a very big pot filled with water and whatever you like to use to brine poultry. I use an equal quantity of kosher salt, Montreal steak seasoning, and granular Splenda. Most people use sugar, but I have that whole formerly fat girl thing going on. Put the pot in the fridge for 24 hours, or do the ice chest/ice thing if your fridge won't accommodate a pot that large.
- The day before chicken day, take the chicken out of the brine, dry it off, and rub it with your favourite dry rub. I use a mixture from the recipe for Paul Prudhomme's sticky chicken. After rubbing the chicken inside and out with the dry rub, put the seasoned chicken into a plastic bag, or a covered roasting pan, and pop it back into the fridge for yet another day. Here's the recipe. I make a bunch at a time, and always have some on hand.
- On chicken day (finally), over your morning coffee (today it was Ethiopian Harar Green Strip roasted to a light Vienna), tell everyone in the house that you just might kill them if they have KFC for lunch.
- Figure that it will take you either a half or a full day to smoke and cook the damn bird. Take it our of the fridge about an hour ahead of time so it can approach room temperature. No more than an hour though, unless you want to spend chicken night worshipping at the porcelain shrine like a college freshman on the night of the big game. The half day version involves smoking it for three hours, and then finishing it on the regular BBQ or in the oven, as you would any other chicken. The full day version involves three hours of smoking, and then finishing it at the same low smoking temperature, either in the smoker, or elsewhere, but at 250 degrees (F).
- if you have a farmer bird and haven't done this already, prep at this point is making sure that the pin feathers have all been pulled out and the neck is long gone. I smoke and cook the chicken on a vertical roaster AKA a beer can roaster. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to begin this process by drinking half of the beer. A Diet Rite ™ can filled with water, or chicken stock, or salad dressing works just fine. Here comes the first picture. It is the nekkid chicken, rubbed with spices, and placed on the vertical roaster. Note the messy counter.
- Now it is time to actually smoke the bird. I use hickory wood chips, most of the time, though fruit woods are lovely too. If I am using the gas BBQ as a smoker, I use wood pellets, instead of chips. The wood chips have to be soaked in water for 15 minutes before you add them to the smoker. In the smoker I used, the moistened chips should be piled (not too high) in the pan provided for them, and placed in the bottom of the smoker, under both the drip pan and the chicken. It takes about 5 minutes for the chips to begin to smoke and 10 minutes for the smoke to fill the smoker. A pan of chips lasts about 45 minutes in this particular smoker.
- I let the smoker warm up with the first batch of chips for about five minutes, before adding the chicken to the smoker box, but you can put the chicken in from the get go. The box really does fill with smoke, and quite soon you will see the smoke coming out of the top or sides of the smoker. When you take off the door to the smoker, it will look like this. I call the picture "headless nekkid chicken in chicken hell". The smoking should be done at around 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
- After about three hours, which in this smoker means you have used four pans of chips, you can either let the chicken stay in the smoker and finish cooking there (think another 4 or so hours), or move it to your regular BBQ or inside to the oven. Use a meat thermometer and make sure the dark meat reaches 165 degrees. This is when you might want to brush the chicken with BBQ sauce. If you are doing it on the grill, do it with indirect heat, leaving a pan of water over the hot part of the BBQ, and the chicken itself over the part without any heat. Close the lid of the grill. It makes for a lousy picture when the lid is closed, but it makes lousy chicken if you cook it with the grill cover open. That weird wire thing sticking in the chicken is the probe from my digital meat thermometer. When you finish cooking the chicken and take it out of the BBQ or oven, let it rest tented in foil for at least 15 minutes, so the juices redistribute themselves within the meat. No one likes dry chicken. The temperature of the chicken will increase about 7-10 degrees as it rests.
- If I had my way, I'd just eat the chicken standing up over the sink (it's almost as juicy as a tomato sandwich), and be done with it. Most people, including RT, want it cut up and served on a plate with some sort of side dishes. This is how it all turned out.
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Mo'Tags: coffee, homelife 
