It is customary to marinate the chicken before baking. Well, or at least soak it in solinade. This is done to make the meat more tender and juicy.
However, I have been plagued by doubts for a long time, and not vague ones: why should modern broilers, who are not afraid of their rigidity anyway, still soften?
And soaking in solinade is another idea.
It is very rare to buy a bird in which foreign liquids have not been introduced in advance. A high-quality bird should be dry, but the touch and liquid should not ooze from it. And now? Most of the time, the bird is very, very wet, and not just outside.
For the experiment, hang the purchased bird and see how much moisture flows out of it. It is very common for frozen broilers to see large ice crystals under the skin and even in the meat, so why soak them extra?
On the contrary, this liquid must be expelled to the maximum, otherwise it will flow, flow and flow during baking. Cooking such a bird only on a wire rack or on a spit (optionally a bottle) is problematic even with salt. If you try to bake it on a baking sheet or in a brazier, then the chicken will drown.
And with all this in mind, I thought... why not dry the chicken, following the example of a duck ???
He began his retraining with a simple one: he boiled four liters of water, adding one and a half tablespoons of salt and a teaspoon of sugar to each liter.
He put the washed chicken on the grate, set the grate itself over the sink and began to pour boiling salt over it.
We pour the solinade into more than one place, but scald the chicken, trying not to miss anything. We push back the wings and spread her legs so as not to miss the “armpits” and groin area.
You will see how the skin “sits down” right before our eyes, and whitens a little more.
Next, you need to dry the chicken. The duck is hung dry. In a cool place, but I have such a place - only a refrigerator, and nothing can be hung there. Therefore, he put the chicken on a narrow jar, set it on a pallet and sent it to the lower shelf.
I did it at 11 pm, and in the morning I was even scared: the chicken looked "windy". In general, on this I already put an end to the chicken, but decided to end the experiment.
I prepared a "spread" - soy sauce, spices, a little Dijon mustard, a little vegetable oil.
He missed the chicken inside and out, laid it on the wire rack and sent it to bake at 150 degrees for about an hour. In violation of all the rules, he laid it breast-side up, without bandaging the wings and legs, but, on the contrary, opening them - for even tanning.
Periodically smeared the top with "spread". An hour later, the temperature increased to 170, cooked for another half hour. The skin became ruddy and stretched very appetizingly, but did not burst !.
After half an hour, he turned the chicken over and baked it for another twenty minutes, after which he left the chicken to rest for 15 minutes.
As a result, the meat was soft and juicy, even the breast. Moreover, it was just meat, and not a sprawling "thing".
You can easily bake a prepared chicken just on a baking sheet: nothing superfluous comes out of it.
And the skin turns out to be pleasantly fried.
But it's better to wrap the wings and ends of the legs with foil anyway.