I grew up in a full house with two parents, two sisters, two brothers, plus me. I am still amazed to this day that my Mother, a depression era girl who was the smallest and most nimble of her large family so of course she was the one to crawl into the root cellar under her parent’s house to fetch the canned goods and salted meats, could feed a family of seven with one chicken. Sure, there was copious amounts of corn, noodles, and real vanilla ice cream for dessert, but that chicken...baked in a cast iron skillet in the oven with some salt and pepper, perfectly cooked, stripped clean from it’s carcass, every shred of meat evenly distributed to all at the table, with one exception. In his quiet way that scared many until they realized he was a gentle giant, my Dad would sigh under his breath, “I’ll just have a wing.” That was the signal to hand over the biggest chunk of meat to the head of the table and find some leftover lunch meat to stick in your face.
Buttermilk-Marinated Roast Chicken (page 340 of my new food bible) harkens back to that loud kitchen where everyone competed at the dinner table to have the best story to tell and the last morsel to eat. It is pretty darn good. It is super easy to make. You have to have a little advanced planning, but whatever, we are all stuck at home anyway, so why not have the Amazon Fresh person drop off a quart of buttermilk?
Here is how it works:
Take a whole chicken, minus the giblets that are nestled way up in there, and give it a good couple shakes of good sea salt. Let it hang out for 30 minutes. That’s a perfect amount of time to watch an episode of “Schitt’s Creek” and to reaffirm your love for Eugene Levy. When the credits start to roll, pull out 2 tablespoons of salt (more salt!) with 2 cups of buttermilk and whisk it all up. Tuck the chicken into a big ziploc bag and pour the buttermilk mixture all over it and squish it all around. Keep squishing. Pop the chicken-in-a-ziploc onto a dish in the fridge for a day, squishing it and flipping it when you reach in for cream for your coffee or your chilled white wine.
You’ll need about an hour to let Little Birdie come to room temperature. Crank up your oven to 425, and then shake off the majority of the buttermilk. Godspeed, sweet tangy buttermilk. Your work is done here.
I served it with a side of Garlicky Green Beans, and yes, without question, that is the best way to prepare them. I also whipped up some Yukon gold potatoes that I steamed, smashed, and drenched in butter and salt. I added a full measure of bourbon to my own belly (why is there no chapter on booze?) and it made for a great Saturday night.
But I have to tell you one more story about Little Bird. She was a humble bird. Four pounds, perhaps. The tag on the package from Cermak said “SALE!” $3.99. But I didn’t pay that for this thin skinned beauty. Little Bird and I met on the internet, Facebook to be exact. Like the Tinder of Tender, LB came to me by way of a group called “Buy Nothing Bay View” where people give away their wares from cleaned out closets, parse out bushels of extra mulch, and in this case, give away one of the chickens they had just bought because the whole chicken sale was so good, they bought too many, and their freezer was full up with other goodness (this woman reported she had too many frozen waffles and too much ice cream. I think we could be friends). I responded “Interested” to her post, and off I go on a midnight caper to an apartment building near the airport where she would leave the chicken for me in what can only be described as the mail room. I arrived under the cover of darkness, and in a cubby hole marked “2G” filled with a combination of bulk newspapers and other bags of give away items, I found my Little Bird. She seemed happy that I was there to see her. I tucked her under my arm like a football, and we sprinted back to the car where she found her flight right into my new-to-me chest freezer in the basement. I told my lovely husband what I had done. “You know that chicken is poisoned, right? I’m not going to eat that.”
He just had a wing.
Happy Salting,
Patty
Coming soon: Cindy gave a run at Cacio e Pepe. She will have more to say about that in the next few days. We are still on Salt, so keep reading your chapter and dreaming of all things briney!
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