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The
Crispin Roven Whole Bird |
 Illustration: Luke Knowland
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It's time for Thanksgiving. The markets are filling up with plump young turkeys. There's a bounty of fresh whole birds competing valiantly for a spot in the freezer chest. But on any average day in America, birds are squeezed out by plastic wrap and styrofoam and millions of segregated drumsticks, thighs and breasts. |
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Unnecessary preprocessing is an affront to the aesthetics of cooking. Is there anything in peacetime that conjures up images of senseless slaughter quite like a bucket of wings? In our mechanized violence against poultry, it's easy to lose sight of the dignity of a whole bird. |
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We tend to reserve the whole bird for infrequent soups and roasts. If we plan to cook pieces of chicken we buy pieces of chicken. This is a mistake. Whatever you intend to do, always get the whole animal. Your plans for the fillets will not suffer because you threw in for the bones as well. In fact, the chicken often costs as much as a boneless chicken breast. Whereas the integrity of a whole chicken might be a worthy feature, we shouldn't be afraid to violate it creatively in the privacy of the kitchen.
Two basic skills will aid you in unlocking the inspiration of the bird: disjointing the chicken, and making use of the remaining poultry. What follow are not recipes. |
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Disjointing the chicken Wet your cutting board. You'll have an easier time cleaning it later. Lift the chicken by one leg. A fresh chicken's leg should extend itself willingly. Slide a very sharp cleaver through the skin where the thigh meets the body. You should move from the front of the bird towards the joint, cutting through the thigh meat. Put the chicken down. Rest the cleaver on the joint. Placing a stiff arm on the back of the cleaver, cut through the joint using the weight of your body. Repeat this procedure with the three remaining limbs. Remove the breast from the back by cutting through the rib bones from the front of the bird to the back. It helps to point the front of the bird towards the ceiling. The entire disjointing process can take less than a minute with very little practice. |
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Making a crude stock quickly
Pull the skin from the chicken back. This undoubtedly removes some of the potential flavor from the stock, but it's worth it because it simplifies the straining process. If you leave all the fat on the bird, you'll have to either chill the stock or strain it through cloth. You can strain a skinless stock using only a pot lid. Smash some garlic and a thumb of ginger by thumping them between a cleaver and your cutting board. Quarter a small onion and throw everything in a pot including all the defatted poultry scraps. Don't bother removing the skin from your vegetables. Use a smallish pot; you won't be making a great deal of stock. If you don't have any use for the drumsticks, tear the skin off and throw them in too. The skill in making a crude stock with scraps of chicken is to compromise how much water you use against your choice of alternative flavoring ingredients and how flavorful you need the stock to be. Not all chicken stock has to be perfectly clear and rich. You can make up for lack of chicken flavor with cabbage, chilies, lemon and just about any other edible plant or fungus. A crude stock should always reflect the ingredients immediately at hand. |
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Somehow a flat of thighs doesn't seem to be a deserving neighbor to a grocery bag of fresh leeks and greens. A whole chicken is a more inspirational precursor to a meal than any sum of its parts. Next time you are thinking about poultry, think about the whole bird, and make every dinner more like a holiday dinner. |
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What's the best way? |