week 13: the meat must rest!

April 23, 2009

roasting is a dry-heat cooking method that we use for tender cuts of meat or poultry and certain game meat. for beef, pork and lamb, we sear them first on all sides in a hot pan until a brown crust has formed to tell us that the juices inside the meat will stay there. then we move it to the oven, where the temperature is somewhere between 400 and 500 degrees F to start out. for bone-in poultry or tender game like rabbit, we often skip the browning step and just place the protein in a very hot oven to start. most roasted meat finishes cooking at a lower temperature than it started, usually around 350.

aside from these very basic steps, you can find many ways to make roasted meat flavorful aside from showering it with salt and fresh cracked pepper (though don’t forget to season!). you can rub the outside of red meat with garlic and fresh herbs like oregano, thyme or rosemary. if you’re roasting a whole chicken, you can shove butter and bits of garlic and fresh herbs like thyme and rosemary between the skin and the flesh to add lovely color, flavors and aromas to the crisp skin and juicy meat. and stuffing the cavity doesn’t just refer to bread, sausage or chestnuts; you can shove halved lemons or oranges, onion, whole garlic cloves, sprigs of fresh thyme, parsley, rosemary–any flavoring agent you want to seep into the meat and enhance the flavor.

Chef Pierre swears by trussing his chicken and duck, which means tightly pulling a long, heavy piece of string around the outside of the bird to tuck in all the smaller appendages (like wings and legs) so they don’t burn or dry out during cooking. periodic basting of the meat with its juices will help keep the meat from drying out as well. trussing can also be done with red meat–tying a long tenderloin with string at even intervals will keep the meat straight and uniform in the pan.

like most things in cooking, there is an art to determining doneness in roasts. it can be done by feel, which requires experience. “the best way to know if the meat is done is to touch it to your lip since it is sensitive,” Chef said. “you will know it’s done.”

for those of us who aren’t quite confident enough for that method (or, like me, fear the possibility of blisters), sticking a meat thermometer inside the meat will also work (it must be far enough inside the meat that the thermometer is actually testing the temperature of the center). note: for red meat, rare is 140 degrees F, medium is 155-160 degrees F and well done is 170 degrees F; chicken is 165 degrees F. or, for poultry, you can check the color of the juice seeping from the bird. if it’s clear, the meat is cooked. if the juice is a pinkish-red color, he’s not quite finished cooking, so put him back in.

there are few things more mouthwatering–or sexy–than pulling a golden brown-encrusted whole chicken out of the oven, with flecks of herbs and black pepper visible through its shiny skin as it bathes in juices flavored with its own drippings and the now soft, dull-colored aromatics. but all that enjoyment will quickly go to waste if you don’t allow the meat to rest before you cut into it. not only does it have to finish carry-over cooking when it comes out, but the meat fibers need to relax, so the juice can flow back to the outer tissue from the center of the meat.

after our chickens came out of the oven in class that night, Chef instructed that we quickly flip them on their heads so the juices could flow back to the breasts (which typically are the least fatty and hence, driest part of the bird) before carving. then, he showed us how to properly break down and plate a whole roasted chicken.

a roasted chicken, in eight parts, on my counter

much like cutting up a raw chicken, he began with the thighs, slicing first through the skin to reveal the dark meat underneath. once the thigh meat was properly exposed, he easily popped out the thigh joint by grabbing the thigh between his fingers and thumb and turning it skyward and away from the body of the bird. after removing the thigh, he separated the drumstick from it. he quickly removed the little wings (the ends of which had been trimmed long before cooking, to prevent burning),

then he set to work on the breast meat. he found the breast bone with his fingertips and sliced into the center of the chicken between the two breasts.

he peeled the juicy white meat from the cavity while being careful to leave the crisp skin attached. he then sliced the breast in two on the diagonal for serving. “you don’t need to give the customer a whole one of those chicken breasts. half is plenty,” he said, grabbing a white plate. he first set the widest piece (the thigh) on the plate, then artfully propped the drumstick and breast pieces on top before wedging a small slice of lemon partially underneath the carefully piled chicken parts.

“the customer won’t need more meat than that,” he said, presenting the simple plate to the class. (i could have gone for a little mound of mashed potatoes on the side.) still, a succulent chicken thigh flecked with bits of thyme, cracked pepper and salt and rosemary made a perfect room-temperature snack later that night as i stood at my kitchen counter, hands and face covered in grease and juice, admiring my amateur butcher job and the incomparable flavor of perfectly roasted poultry.