Spatchcocked roast chicken with jus

This is a recipe for a spatchcocked roast chicken with a chicken zu. The audio track, FYI, is from Wholesome, the Patreon show that I make with my friends Ben and Adam. Enjoy. All right, Adam, I'm going to tell you what I did last night. >> I took a whole chicken, you see, and I spatchcocked that baby. >> Cut out the wishbone for ease of carving. went up along the backbone with the kitchen shears, shattering ribs with the mere clenching of my mighty fist. Go up the other side of the spine. Take it out. Keep it for the gravy. >> I used to cut out the breast bone, too. You know, the keel bone, probably because Alton Brown told me to do that many years ago, but now I just leave it in because it's hard to cut out. It also adds mass to the white meat, thereby slowing its cooking, thereby giving the dark meat more time to get soft and sticky. And I laid that bird on a baking sheet like you lay your lady on a motel bedspread when the mood has become a mutual emergency. Olive oil, lots of salt and pepper all over. Oven at 400 Fahrenheit. Convection. Never touched it again. No basting. Basting can be good, but it tends to make the skin wet. If you just leave it, and especially if you use a convection fan, the skin gets dry and blistered and crackly as this skin did on this night. Why was this night different from all other nights? That's some borch belt humor for Ben. Benjamin Harrison, constitutionally one of the waspiest human beings I've ever met. And yet, >> why was this night different from all other nights? Because of what I did with the gravy, >> or rather what I didn't do. When you roast your chicken on a big wide baking sheet, there's tons of hot surface area to evaporate all the juice that comes gushing out. When there's wide surface area available, the water in the juice evaporates, leaving the dissolved solids behind to aggregate and brown on the pan surface. When you take the chicken out, there's no juice to separate from the rendered fat. There's just the fat because fat doesn't evaporate. And then there's delicious fried brown solids, mostly proteins, adhered to the bottom. Normally what I do is is I stir some some flour into that grease to make a schmaltzy rue. Let that brown for a few minutes. Then I start working in a carton of chicken stock. Delazing the pan as I go. And there, that's your gravy. a meaty liquid thickened with starch gravy. But on this night, I thought, "Nay, the mood calls for something simpler, more elegant, more continental." I took the bird away to rest. And then I just poured off the grease. All of the juices being solidified and secure on the bottom of the baking sheet. Poured off the grease. And then I took water. Bless the maker and his water. Water, of course, is also a key ingredient in coffee, which is a beverage that is currently being revolutionized by Cometier, sponsor of this video. You know, for thousands of years, we roasted chickens over open fires, and that was good. But we invented ovens for a reason. And I kind of think that we're at a similar inflection point right now when it comes to making our coffee. Comeer has developed this novel process by which they can precision brew coffee at 10 times strength and then they flash freeze it in here so it preserves all those aromomas and all you have to do is pop it out and melt it in water. No machine, no waiting. You can make hot coffee, iced coffee, espresso drinks. Just treat it like an espresso shot. And the flavor and the mouth feel is so smooth and fresh and good as to almost be a a new thing relative to the conventional coffee that I've always had. Oh, and be aware, each cup has like twice as much caffeine than you're used to. I mean, they do have decaf. The beans come from award-winning roasters. Check this variety pack. You got your Intelligencia, Black and White, Proud Mary, and I can have just one cup without committing myself to an entire bag of beans. The capsules are aluminum, so they're fully recyclable. If you haven't tried Cometier yet, you can save $30 off your first order by using my link in the description, cometier.com/adamriggusia. Thank you, Comet. Anyway, I took the roasting tray and I added nothing but pure water. Bless the maker and his water. Pure, simple, uncorrupted, unclloridated water. Water from the sky meets the brown solidified water from the bird. His water shall mingle with our water and produce that most elemental of sauces, the hydrogen of sauces. Really, the sauce that is the mother to the mother sauces. the sauce equivalent of Au Iluvatar, possessor of the flame imperishable, who dwells in the timeless halls of Aah, and whose music begat the Eor. I dissolved those little brown bits with plain water to make zu. Zu being dissolved fond. >> Is that more borchbilt humor? >> >> You can say it. Zu dissolved fond. Actually, Adam, zu is just French for juice. Crema is a Mexican condiment of lightly fermented or otherwise acid thickened cream. Actually, Adam, crema is just Spanish for cream. There are comments I get on this internet that require guided breathing exercises to overcome. Yes, zu just means juice in French, but in a culinary context, it means dissolved fond. Do is just English for dough. But in a fiscal pecuniary context, do means money. This is not an unprecedented linguistic phenomenon, pal. Anyways, I put that baking sheet on the hot stove top. Water in. Sizzle, sizzle, scrape with the wooden spoon to get those brown bits off. Boil for a few minutes to fully dissolve all those bits. You see the liquid go from translucent, tan, and chunky to like opaque, amber, and smooth. Then what I did was I transferred the liquid to a small pot where I could more easily reduce it by about half until it became a little thick and glossy from the dissolved collagen that we call gelatin from which the word gel was derived in the late 19th century. I got this enchanting amber liquid reduced to a light loose gel. And then as I ate my roasted chicken, I dipped the pieces into my little capo. My auction Adam au means with juice. So, it's an adjectal phrase, not a noun like you're using it. >> Is this going to be an episode about not reading the comments? Oh, you know what it's about. I would gladly drown in a warm bath of this golden chicken jew. This was a good move on my part. From the French dip sandwich to the leings of a sliced steak on my seasoned cutting board, the juice is the best part. That most wholesome of meat products. I have prepared a list of different kinds of juice that I will present to the boys for their consideration. Okay. Okay. I'm going to cut it off there. Again, that audio was from Wholesome, the weekly show that I make with my buddies. Of all of the media properties with which I am associated, I kind of think that's the best one these days. And it's Patreon only. Link is in the description. As little as $5 a month gets you everything, including a year and a half of back episodes now. We've done shows on old country buffets, obscure Schwarzenegger movies, gardening, drumming, anglophilia. We just go really, really deep on the things that bring us joy. and we do it for a small group of people behind the payw wall where we feel comfortable being ourselves. If you want to join that community, the Patreon link is in the description. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Bye-bye. That's a joke that you'll get if you start listening to the show.