Taste With The Eyes: Thank You Julia: Roast Chicken with a Natural Sauce

8.11.2009

Thank You Julia: Roast Chicken with a Natural Sauce

"A well-roasted chicken is the mark of a fine cook. Even among professionals, it is a source of pride to present a shapely chicken, with beautifully colored skin and perfectly done meat, juicy and tender. There is nothing technically difficult about roasting a chicken but there are many approaches to take...for serving either of our chickens, we suggest a delicious pan sauce." from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.

The oven is preheated to 425°F. The chicken is rinsed thoroughly with hot water and dried with paper towels. Fat lumps are removed from the cavity. The small bony protrusions "nubbins" are removed from the wing-tip joints.

Carving is made easier when the wishbone is removed. This is done by lifting the neck skin and inserting a thin sharp knife into each end of the breast and slicing diagonally along each side of the wishbone.

The finger and thumb are used to loosen the bone, pry it out at the top, pull down, wriggling it out.

"A cooking process such as roasting a chicken is inexact - there is no one way that is the right way," writes Julia. "Just start with a good chicken and pay attention to how you cook it."

Voilà! The wishbone is removed!

"Not everything I do with my roast chicken is necessarily scientific," she says. "For instance I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it, and more important, I like to give it."

Season the cavity with salt and pepper, stuff it with 4 sprigs of fresh tarragon and 4 thick slices of lemon. Give the lemon a little squeeze as they are inserted. Massage softened butter over the entire chicken skin and salt generously. Squeeze lemon juice over the chicken. "I learned the butter massage when I started cooking for the first time in France and would never give it up."

The wings were folded up against the breast and the drumsticks tied together with twine. After roasting for 15 minutes, the heat is lowered to 350°F. The chicken is repeatedly basted with accumulated juices. Rough chopped carrots and onions are added after 30 minutes more. (We got nice caramelized brown bits in the bottom of the pan but had to add some chicken stock to the pan to prevent burning). The chicken is done when the juices run clear. Pierce the breast with the tines of a carving fork, press to bring the juices up, there should be no traces of pink. After about 1 1/2 hours the chicken was removed to a cutting board to rest for 15 minutes.

A Natural Sauce from the Roasting Pan

The pan can be tilted to accumulate the juices and fat in one corner, then spoon off the fat.

Julia shares, "Another aspect of roasting that is very important to me - also a lesson from my early years in France - is making the deglazing sauce from the drippings and brown bits in the roasting pan. These brown bits are the precious, caramelized natural juices, their flavor intensified and concentrated by the process of roasting and basting. When you turn these bits into a 'deglazing' sauce, you are preserving and essence of pure delicious chicken. There is nothing better to serve with your roast."

Or do as we did, pouring everything into a gravy separator, then pouring the juices back into the pan, which worked great for removing the vegetables and much of the fat.

The pan is placed over two medium heat burners, 2 T. minced shallots are added to the pan, stirring briefly. Then 1/3 c. of dry white wine and 2/3 c. chicken stock are added, raise the heat to high, and cook to get the sauce to the right consistency, scraping up all the glazed bits in the pan with a wooden spoon. Taste the sauce, adjust seasoning. Strain to remove bits, add butter for a richer finish (we skipped the butter and found the sauce delightfully rich and flavorful without it).

Lauren carves the bird: Remove the trussing strings and lay the chicken on its side. Cut the skin all around the thigh and leg. Lift the leg and pull away. The thigh will break off at the hip joint. Separate the drumstick from the thigh. Then holding the fork in the breast, cut through the should joint under the wing. Slice through to the outer part of the breast. Remove the breast meat with the wing attached.

Roast Chicken with a Natural Sauce

Pour the sauce onto a warm platter.

Top with the carved chicken.

Recipe from:

Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home

Published by Random House 1999

A well-roasted chicken and delicious sauce indeed!

Merci Beaucoup Julia!

Once again, in honor of Julia's birthday, August 15th, Lisa of Champaign Taste blog is hosting the Fourth Annual Julia Child Birthday Celebration. Please join us in celebrating Julia, details here.

"Toujours Bon Appétit!"

Julia Child Quotes - TOUJOURS BON APPETIT!

“You should never apologize at the table. People will think, ‘Yes, it’s really not so good.'"

"In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport."

"It's easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don't bring you oysters." Paul Child on speaking French

"I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate. "

"Life itself is the proper binge."

"It was a Morsel of Perfection."

"I was in pure, flavorful heaven at the Cordon Bleu."

Julia Child sees herself on TV, July 1962, she saw room for improvement, and still she can say it was fun : "There I was, in black and white, a large woman sloshing eggs too quickly here, too slowly there, gasping, looking at the wrong camera while talking too loudly and so on...But it had been fun."

She has her own opinions on kitchen equipment: "Clairborne sniffed at our use of a garlic press, 'a gadget considered in some circles to be only one cut above garlic salt or garlic powder.' I happened to like garlic presses..."

Understanding Julia's captivation by French food: "This is the kind of food that I have fallen in love with: not trendy souped-up fantasies, just something very good to eat. It was classic French cooking, where the ingredients have been carefully selected and beautifully and knowingly prepared. Or, in the words of the famous gastronome Curnonsky, 'Food that tastes of what it is.' "

"You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made. Even after you eat it, it stays with you - always." Julia's instructor, Chef Bugnard at Le Cordon Bleu

"Oh, 'crise de foie,' that French sole was so delicious!"

Julia's passion comes through loud and clear as she describes a fish dish: "La Truite's true glory was the Sole a la Normande, a poem of poached and flavored sole fillets surrounded by oysters, and mussels, and napped with a wonder-sauce of wine, cream, and butter, and topped with fluted mushrooms. 'Voluptuous' was the word. I had never imagined that fish could be taken so seriously, or taste so heavenly."

Julia's unique way with words, on Crepes Suzette: "The creature named Suzette may or may not have been the mistress of the Prince of Wales, but whoever she was, she long ago inspired a magnificent dessert that is still one of our favorites."

"I am probably one of the few people around who saw the real Caesar Cardini making his salad. I was about 9 when my parents took me to his restaurant in Tijuana. They were so excited when big jolly Caesar himself came to the table to make the salad. And it was dramatic: I remember most clearly the eggs going in, and how he tossed the leaves so it looked like a wave turning over."

"With a handsome package such as Jacques's, you can neatly cut the top open at the table with a pair of scissors..." Julia on Salmon en Papillote

"There's no reason to be intimidated by the idea of making pâté. You can just think of it as meat loaf."

From Julia's dear friend Jacques Pepin, "You are what you cook."

"Understanding egg yolks will make you a master of hollandaise sauce."

Julia encouraging us not to be intimidated: "When you know how to saute your meat so it browns rather than steams, you're cooking. What's difficult about that? You heat the pan, you dry the meat, you don't crowd it into the pan, and you're browning it. Is that difficult?"

Food Quotes

"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."

Orson Welles

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

"Chefs, as a whole, say yes to any project, fundraiser, or tasting because they have such a generous spirit."
Charlie Trotter

"Once you understand the foundations of cooking - whatever kind you like, whether it's French or Italian or Japanese - you really don't need a cookbook anymore. "
Thomas Keller

"I love to make people happy."
Wolfgang Puck

"Fish sauce is to Vietnamese cooking as olive oil is to Italian."

The Little Saigon Cookbook by Ann Le

"I wish, I wish lunch could last forever...waiter, bring us one more bottle of wine..."

Jimmy Buffett

"My philosophy from day one is that I can sleep better at night if I can improve an individual's knowledge about food and wine, and do it on a daily basis."
Emeril Lagasse

"Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef."
Nigella Lawson

"You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else."
Mario Batali

"I always knew the importance of it, since I was three or four years old my mother used to feed me wine and water. I grew up with wine as liquid food."
Robert Mondavi

"No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at his/her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, and the wisdom of cookbook writers."
Laurie Colwin

"Food is a central part of our lives. It provides the body with fuel and raw materials for maintenance, growth, and repair. It draws together family and friends, anchors celebrations and rites of passage, and sometimes soothes the soul."
Ethan Becker