How to get the roast chicken spiced?

The skin is not particularly permeable to flavor. Rub the spices under the skin and inside the cavity works better.

^^What phatch said^^  I like to rub a mixture of garlic, cayenne, thyme and butter under the skin. Be gentle when separating the membrane from the flesh :)

also stuff but not overstuff the cavity with orange and onion wedges, whole garlic cloves and dry vermouth. a sprig of fresh herb is nice if you have it..... i like rosemary or thyme.  when you rub the spices/garlic/butter etc. under the skin, rub it under ALL the skin...breast, thighs and legs.

joey

If you REALLY want to get flavor into your roast chickens you are going to have to brine them in my humble opinion.

Would you mind sharing the recipe for "my humble opinion"? I have never tried that brine!

I agree, rub the spices under the skin.  Me I don't mind if the skin is super tasty and the meat is kind of bland.  I make up for it with a nice jus.

I vote for brining as well.  You can spice your brine up to your liking and the flavor will permeate your bird.  For crisp skin you must get the skin dry.  Brine over night, dry over day and it should be good to go.

You can also inject part of the spiced (and filtered) brine into the chicken.

perhaps the chicken you are using itself is the problem. fresh? frozen? young? old? free range? kosher? organic? 

fresh, young and free range is best...well, kosher is if you can get it. i would buy the best chicken you can afford. the better the bird was raised and fed, the better the taste.... in this case size does matter...a smaller chicken is better. use a roaster for roasting...not a fryer or a stew hen...lastly, a simplier alternative to brining is to just sprinkle kosher salt all over the chicken and refreigerate for a few hours or overnight. it almost does the same thing without all the muss......

joey

I'm a fan of salting 24 hours in advance. Don't add the salt to a spice mixture or butter. Apply the salt to the chicken in advance. Before you cook the bird, add your spiced butter underneath the skin of the bird, all around in a thin layer.
 

Brine them in what?

salt water.....or rather salted water......not sea water! 

joey

One thing I've done for years is to carefully seperate the skin from the flesh, then stuff butter under the skin and massage it around, to coat the flesh as evenly as possible.  Thick keeps the chicken moist during cooking.  You can add herbs and spices to the butter before applying, to get a flavoured end product.  However, the flavour is usually imparted if you stuff the cavity with a herb blend of stuffing.  The way I make it is bread soaked with water, chopped onion, a herb mix and any spices required.  I also add a bit of butter for moisture while cooking.  Mix it all together, squeeze to remove water, then stuff chicken.

commercially we do not stuff for sanitation reasons but I do season and butter undr skin myself as well as putting parsley sprigs and lemon essence in cavity.

Joey I used to buy the whole organic free range chickens the very day they were dressed out and still I could get almost no flavor, even putting the whole herb garden under the skin, unless I brined.   I happened to mention this to the farmer where I was buying and they were very insulted, never returned my calls again (I had to place an order and they called when they were ready to do the "deed").     The house would smell so good as it was roasting and then tasted so bland on the plate.   When I saw an Alton Brown show about brining, I was so grateful.  Suddenly I could make really good herbed roasted chicken too.

I still buy free range organic when I can, but I also buy frozen and still have to brine them all if I want flavor.

hey indygal,

salting the bird and refrigerating it uncovered helps to dry out the skin so it will crisp up when roasting...it is not to replace brining which goes deeper...it is only the 'fast and dirty' way...a shortcut if you will..... i don't know if you can have organic free range chickens since free range means they range and eat free, but are not fed hormones or antibiotics etc.... i'm not sure but i think organic infers that the birds eat only organic feed...don't know how that can be controlled if the chickens are free ranging...all i know is that organic chicken tastes like crap...i don't care what you do to it!...(of course, as always, this is only my opinion) 

joey

Hi Joey,

I'm not too sure of nomeclature either, but I've seen the operation.  

They have huge chicken wire "kennel" things that they move every day.   Chickens are free to move around and eat naturally growing grasses, seeds, etc, in addition to locally grown pesticide & hormone free feed, so there isn't anything that could be considered non-organic, or am I definiing it differently than most people do?   They have two English Shepherds who force the chickens to move with the kennel things as the chickens would like to escape underneath it.  So it is more "free range type feed" than truly loose chickens.

I brined anywhere from a few hours to all day, I'm afraid.   I put herbs in the brine ant that allowed them to permeated and flavor the meat too.

One variety of laying hen they had gave little blue/green eggs, and those were the best poaching eggs I've ever had.  The whites were super firm and looke almost too pretty to eat!  But  they were small.

I still salt the grocery chickens before roasting too.   

hey indygal, 

as a funny aside to all this, i once had a dog in the islands that was accused of eating all the neighborhood chickens...i went to battle for this dog, but it became very hard when he(mutley) had chicken feathers and blood dripping from his mouth!!!!  i still defended him for some reason......yeah the blue eggs are beautiful to cook...i don't eat them, but when i cooked on the arizona ranch the past few winters and the fresh eggs were pulled every morning still warm, the blue ones were always coveted and they cooked up so purdy!....

joey

as for organic vs. free range vs. free range organic if there is such a thing,i thought i knew but now my thinking is that's it's all just another hype or scam or something just totally not honest...it's like when i found out about kfc chickens and how they are raised...OMG...god, don't get me started...what about all the turkeys for thanksgiving...raised so fat breasted that they need a walker...oh geez...guess the bottom line is...do you feel better eating what you are eating? and do you feel better better about not endorsing 'industrial farming/ agriculture' and supporrting your local farmer? sorry indy for the rant....but may the beat go on!...

Quote:

Originally Posted by durangojo 

hey indygal, 

as a funny aside to all this, i once had a dog in the islands that was accused of eating all the neighborhood chickens...i went to battle for this dog, but it became very hard when he(mutley) had chicken feathers and blood dripping from his mouth!!!!  i still defended him for some reason......yeah the blue eggs are beautiful to cook...i don't eat them, but when i cooked on the arizona ranch the past few winters and the fresh eggs were pulled every morning still warm, the blue ones were always coveted and they cooked up so purdy!....

 

 

OMG!  Poor chickens.   I understand believing that Fluffy would never do such a thing, but my girl I just had to rehome was a killer.  Squirrels, wild rabbits, possums, and even snatched birds right out of the hair.  TG she never had a chance at any chickens.  But she did attack and kill a grand champion angora rabbit of mine one day.  Viciously attcked her, and even when I got the poor doe out of her mouth, she was still trying for it.  She got a beating over tht one.

My brother had to put his own dog to sleep, she was escaping every single enclosure they came up with and going to the neighbor's barn and killing his fancy State Fair winning chickens.    Then she was caught in the barn of another neighbor having pulled the leg off of a (meat) rabbit through a hole underneath.  He shot her himself.   They tried everything, including chaining her to prevent it, but could not stop her.   She was a golden retriever mix, as sweet as anything when she wasn't out killing small animals.

The dogs that could get loose used to form packs in the winter and take down deer in the neighborhood I grew up in the foothills of Salt Lake. The deer would come down out of the mountains and eat up people's yards.