Ina Garten Has 53 Chicken Recipes. Here’s What Happened When I Tried to Find Her Best - Yahoo Lifestyle |
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Posted: 17 Jun 2021 04:00 PM PDT  You don't have to be an Ina Garten superfan to know that the woman loves a chicken recipe. A quick search through the Barefoot Contessa's full cookbook index yields a whopping 53 results for recipes with "chicken"—chicken with shallots, chicken with morels, chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, Tuscan lemon chicken, Jeffrey's roast chicken, stop me anytime. When I set out to find the best Ina Garten chicken recipes, I didn't expect to stop looking after the first two. So, apologies in advance, but I can't definitively tell you which recipes are the best. I can tell you that I think I've figured out that our queen in chambray has a little secret to the success of all those poultry dishes: They all follow roughly the same formula.  I started my testing process with the Contessa's skillet-roasted lemon chicken from her 2016 cookbook, Cooking for Jeffrey. It calls for a mere ten ingredients (including salt, pepper and olive oil) and the bird itself cooks for less than an hour, thanks to a method called spatchcocking that flattens the chicken. I thought it must be one of her best recipes, based on the simplicity alone. And yes, this chicken was good. But considering Garten is known for her effortless, impressive dishes, I found the spatchcocking to be unnecessarily tedious and the flavor a little plain. The recipe was a success, but not as mind-blowing as I had hoped. It wasn't the best. I moved on to lemon chicken with croutons from Barefoot in Paris, thinking the bread element would add intrigue. The recipe involves roasting a whole chicken atop a bed of onions and lemon, then serving it with crispy croutons to soak up the juices.  Again, it was a successful recipe. But I prefer my own recipe for buttermilk roast chicken, which is juicier and better seasoned with little extra effort. Garten calls for washing the chicken before cooking it, which is an outdated practice that can spread germs around in your sink, and she doesn't call for seasoning the outside of the bird, which ended up a little bland. (I was right about the croutons though. They were the best part.) That's where I stopped. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't falling in love with these recipes, until I compared them with the others from her cookbook collection. (My library is 80 percent Ina.) Garten's recipes are foolproof, sure. They turn out every time, and that's no small feat. But save for a few recipes, most of her chickens err on the traditional side. They rely on the same ingredients for maximum flavor and simplicity: lemon, onion, olive oil, maybe some white wine or garlic if you're feeling spicy. Varying sides of roasted vegetables are about as wild as they get. I think expected to be blown away with tricks, techniques and inventive flavor combinations, but that's not the Ina way. I don't mean that as an insult at all. I love Garten's easy-breezy attitude, elegance and store-bought-is-fine mentality. What I discovered, though, is that if you know what works (like Ina does), you can replicate it as many times as you want, and people will ooh and ahh even if it's the same. Chicken with lemon—what could be bad about that? Garten's recipes aren't reinventing the wheel; she simply makes minor modifications to her tried-and-true methods. That said, there seem to be three constants to all of Garten's chicken recipes:
So what makes those recipes so compelling to people all over the world? My hunch is that it's a combination of variables: Her laidback yet decidedly elegant persona—the Hamptons vibes, chambray tops and jazzy theme song—is purely aspirational. Where she becomes attainable is in the repetition of flavors and techniques that say, "Hey, you can totally cook this too." And if I can whip up a dinner as delicious and impressive as Ina can, I can (kinda, sorta) be just like her. I'll probably have to look harder to find my be-all, end-all chicken recipe, and I'll never be as chic (read: rich) as Ina Garten. But at least I can cook a chicken as good as hers.  |
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Three Ways to a Better Chicken Breast - The New York Times Posted: 07 Jun 2021 12:00 AM PDT  In the 1723 cookery book "The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary," the author John Nott shares a recipe for chicken breasts, in which the skins get lifted and stuffed with grated bacon, anchovies and herbs. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it's one of the first written accounts of the noun cluster "chicken breasts" in the English language. It's also a great way to cook white meat so that it doesn't dry out. One major design flaw of the chicken breast is that its thickness varies significantly from end to end. This makes for vexingly uneven cooking — especially when the meat comes boneless and skinless. By the time the wide, bulbous side has cooked through, the lither, tapered side (not to mention the outer edges of the entire breast) has gone stringy, practically desiccated. But here's the thing: You don't have to accept that ugly lopsidedness. Take control of your life — and of your chicken. The trick to keeping breast meat tender and juicy is to alter its anatomy completely. There are a few key ways to do this. The easiest is to carve the breast in half crosswise where the thicker end meets the thinner end. This way you can pull the thinner pieces off the heat earlier, allowing the thicker ones to finish cooking for another minute or two. Another method is to ensure the meat retains its natural moisture. What makes a chicken breast juicy is water, not fat (after all, white meat is very lean). A simple dry brine — a mixture of salt, sugar and spices — provides that bit of insurance. It's the salt that's most crucial, as it draws out the meat's water. That water then dissolves the salt on the surface of the meat and, through diffusion, the two re-enter the meat, seasoning the chicken thoroughly. As evidenced by Volume 3 of "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking," dissolved salt modifies the protein structure of meat, allowing it to hold onto water by slowing the contraction of muscle fibers during the cooking process. This contraction ordinarily "squeezes juices out during cooking," but a dry brine rewards you with retained juiciness. A marinade can yield similarly juicy results through different means. In this stir-fry, a group of enzymes in fresh pineapple, bromelain, breaks down the connective tissues of fibrous chicken, turning the otherwise taut meat into slackened nuggets. Watch and be amazed as this powerful potion transforms tough, plain white meat into a supple dark-meat doppelgänger. But proceed with caution: Marinate the chicken too long and you'll end up with gluey shreds of meat. Fifteen minutes is the Goldilocks time, which is to say, just right. Other acidic ingredients have similar benefits. The lactic acid in sour cream tenderizes chicken beautifully and also helps crunchy, savory coatings stick to the meat. Smear it all over chicken breasts and encase them in a thick coating of buttery Ritz cracker crumbs and grated sharp Cheddar for a result equal parts moist and crisp. This comforting chicken bake tastes best with cutlets, which are always a great weeknight option. Though you could pound a thick breast out into a thin paillard (which also breaks down the fibers of the meat), another less violent approach is to slice through the middle of the breast horizontally so you're left with two cutlets of equal size. As with most things in life, two is better than one. Recipes: Dry-Brined Chicken Breasts | Pineapple-Marinated Chicken Breasts | Ritzy Cheddar Chicken Breasts And to Drink …The tangy, umami flavors of Ritzy Cheddar chicken breasts would go awfully well with a rich, balanced chardonnay, whether from Oregon, California, Australia or Burgundy. I often warn against oak flavors in wine, and I never want overt oakiness. But with this dish, a chardonnay with the textural and subtle flavor additions of well-integrated oak would be delightful. Sparkling wines like Champagne or Vouvray Brut would also be delicious. You could drink a still Vouvray as well or a Savennières, both Loire Valley whites made with the chenin blanc grape. As for the pineapple-marinated chicken breast, the sweetness of the fruit offers an opportunity for a sweet wine. Try a spätlese riesling, or even a sweeter auslese. A demi-sec Vouvray, a Tokaji Aszu or even a Sauternes would be great fun with this dish. ERIC ASIMOV  |
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