The rite of carving makes a roast chicken seem like a special occasion, and with a little practice, any cook can look like an expert. These photos show the basic way to carve a chicken: into 2 breasts and 2 thighs with the drumsticks attached.
MAKES 4 MAIN-COURSE SERVINGS
- One 4-pound chicken
- Salt
- Pepper
- 1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature
- Jus or Gravy (optional)
- 2 pounds chicken drumsticks, wings, or backs, chopped into 2-inch pieces with a cleaver
- 1 large carrot, cut into 1-inch sections
- 1 onion, quartered
- 2 teaspoons flour if making gravy
- 1 cup chicken jus from roasting pan or chicken broth or water.
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Truss the chicken if you want to go through the trouble and season the chicken on the outside with salt and pepper. Take a sheet of aluminum foil about 18 inches long and fold it to create a triple thickness. It will need to be vaguely trapezoidal to cover the breasts and not the thighs. Smear one side with the butter and place it, buttered side down, over the chicken breasts.
If you are making a jus or gravy, spread the chicken parts, carrot, and onion in a roasting pan or skillet just large enough to hold them in a single layer and roast for 20 minutes.
Place the chicken in a pan just large enough to hold it or in the pan with the chicken parts. Roast the chicken for 25 minutes, take off the foil, and roast for 15 minutes more. Check the temperature by sticking an instant-read thermometer about 3 inches in through the skin between the breast and the thigh. When it reads 140°F, take the chicken out of the pan. If you don’t have a thermometer, judge the doneness by lifting the chicken and tilting it so some of the juices run out of the cavity. If the juices are pink and cloudy, the chicken isn’t done. If they are clear but streaked with red, it is done. If they are perfectly clear, with no red, the chicken is overdone. Lift the chicken out of the roasting pan by inserting a wooden spoon into the cavity. Tilt the chicken so any juice in the cavity runs into the pan. Let the chicken rest in a warm place loosely covered with aluminum foil for 10 minutes before serving.
If you are making a jus or gravy, look in the roasting pan to see if the juices have caramelized. If they have, the bottom of the pan will be coated with brown and a layer of clear fat will be floating on top. Just pour or spoon off the fat and discard it. If they haven’t caramelized, you will see brown liquid combined with the fat. The mixture of fat and juices may even be cloudy, meaning the juices have emulsified with the fat, which you want to avoid. If the juices haven’t caramelized, put the roasting pan on the stove top and boil the juices until they caramelize on the bottom and separate from the fat, and then pour off the fat. You now have a roasting pan with a layer of caramelized juices and no or very little fat. Add a small amount of water or chicken broth, put the pan on the stove, and scrape the bottom with a wooden spoon for a couple of minutes to dissolve the caramelized juices. Strain the juices and serve in a warmed sauceboat.
If you want to thicken the juices into a gravy—not usually worth the bother with a roast chicken —leave about a tablespoon of fat in with the juices, add the flour, stir it in the fat over the heat for a minute, and then whisk in the water or chicken broth.
Carve the chicken. If you need to divide the meat more equitably, cut the breasts crosswise in half and cut the thighs away from the drumsticks. Give everyone half of a breast and a thigh or a drumstick. Pass the jus or gravy in a sauceboat.
Safety
If not handled carefully, raw chicken can contaminate other foods with salmonella. Never, for example, cut up a chicken on a cutting board and then use the same cutting board, unwashed, to cut other ingredients that you will be serving raw or to later carve the cooked chicken. Cutting boards used for raw chicken should be well washed with hot water mixed with a little bleach to disinfect them. When working with raw chicken, wash
your hands constantly.
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