Cool Tip: Roast Chicken ...Revisited...

If I had to pick one dish to eat every day for the rest of my life, it would be roast chicken. There is something about the crisp skin and juicy meat that just oozes comfort and culinary satisfaction.

But we had always had what I call the roast chicken conundrum: because the breast and thighs need to be cooked to two different temperatures to be done perfectly, you had to choose one and sacrifice the other. So while we might get a great chicken breast, the legs thighs and joints were underdone, and we had to recook them if we wanted to use them later. Or if we did cook the bird so that the legs and thighs were done, the breast meat was dry and stringy.

When I'm in a quandary like that, I like to consult the experts, and my first choice is J. Kenji López-Alt at Serious Eats, who brings a wonderful scientific approach to cooking. His solution is to spatchcock (butterfly) the chicken, an easy procedure that works like magic.

Enjoy!