“Chicken asao, asao, asao, asao, with salad, good menu, good menu, good menu sir.” This is what the song by the comedy group Golden Apple Quartet says to describe the qualities of the Sunday dish par excellence in many homes. A healthy, cheap and easy-to-prepare recipe that is loved by both adults and children. A “good menu”, as the song says, that ensures we get out of any situation successfully.
But be careful, because although the recipe is very simple, you have to be careful with those small details that can make the chicken drier than the mojama or that it has no flavor at all. We explain the five mistakes that we most often make.
If you do it like this, you're already starting badly. “You have to take it out of the refrigerator at least 3 hours before,” explains chef Jordi Vilà, head of the most beautiful restaurant in the world – Alquimia, in Barcelona, which in 2017 received the international award for best design restaurant SBID 2017 – and Al Kostat, the B side of Alkimia just a few steps from the dining room.
“You don't have to be afraid to take it out of the refrigerator ahead of time,” continues the chef, who explains that “it's not going to go bad in any way” and that this simple detail will influence it to roast better. “The transmission of temperature will be much more progressive when cooking,” says Vilà, so the meat will be much more tender as it will not suddenly go from cold to hot.
We will go faster, yes, but rushing in the kitchen is never good. Eugeni de Diego, former director of BulliLab and chef at A Pluma, a small place in Barcelona where chicken a l'ast are the stars, knows this well.
De Diego recommends setting the oven to 180ºC and letting the chicken cook at its own pace. It will take about two hours but it will be “tender and melty” because “the chicken meat is only cooked when it reaches 74ºC inside,” says the cook. Doing it quickly and with the oven turbo on is the main reason why sometimes the roast chicken is drier than the mojama.
The position of the chicken on the tray is also important. Jordi Vilà confesses it to us, who also reveals his great secret: "The chicken must be roasted with the breast side down because this way its internal juices rush downwards and it becomes much more tender," says the cook, adding that in the last 10 minutes is when you have to turn it over so that it toasts well on top.
This cook is also against rushing and using the turbo: “It is a ventilated heat that the only thing it does is dry out. No ingredient inside the oven will appreciate it,” he adds.
No more sprinkling a little salt on top minutes before cooking, you have to season the chicken as God intended before roasting it. “The salt has to penetrate the meat well if we want it to be tasty,” says the Alquimia chef, since otherwise the salt stays in the crust and toasts when grilling. Let us also not forget that chicken itself is “a rather bland and tasteless ingredient,” recalls De Diego.
And what is the technique to season it as God intended? “Splash and pepper it a day before,” says Vilà. It is simply a matter of leaving it in salt to marinate, for example overnight, so that the salt penetrates. A very easy trick that only requires a little forethought.
It seems silly, but cutting it and serving it poorly after all the work is a sin. For this reason, De Diego offers us a series of tips when carving: “You have to start by cutting the breasts and, once separated, move on to the part of the back that has been attached.”
The next step is to cut through that part of the back to separate the chicken into two, “breast and leg.” Once the bone that joins these two parts is separated, the chicken will be separated into quarters, which in turn can be cut in half. With these tips, and a good pair of poultry cutting scissors, you will never destroy it again.
