Cooking Poultry to Perfection

Without doubt, poultry is the most versatile of all meats. We eat poultry any way imaginable except raw. Chicken, particularly today's quick-raised supermarket broilers, have relatively little flavor. It is cooking and flavoring that transform that low-flavor chunk of meat into a delicious dish. Check this out for yourself.  

• Steam or poach a piece of chicken breast and add nothing but salt. Your cat might even turn its nose up at the bland flavor. But poultry has the admirable quality of snatching, borrowing and soaking up flavors that you either add directly or into the liquid it cooks in. But that's not all. The chemical reactions triggered by heat, particularly browning, what transform the bland to delicious.
• The two broad categories of cooking poultry are:
• Dry heat cooking:
•  grilling (barbecuing) or broiling
•  sautéing
• deep-frying
• stir-frying
• baking
• Moist heat cooking:
•  braising
•  stewing
• With dry heat cooking methods, high temperature without additional liquid cooks the meat. The change in moist cooking occurs at a lower temperature with additional flavored liquid.
• A second major difference between the cooking methods is the final internal temperature of the poultry. In dry heat cooking strive to reach an internal temperature of slightly above 150°F (66°C). This gives the juiciest poultry meat. In moist cooking, the final temperature is the same as the liquid the meat cooks in-simmering temperature.

Dry cooking

• In grilling, broiling and baking you add nothing to the meat but flavoring and sometimes, if the poultry is too dry, a little fat. In sautéing, deep-frying and stir-frying, oil and high temperature convert the meat into a succulent dish.
• All dry-cooking methods use high temperature, at least 300°F (157°C) in baking, much higher in grilling and broiling. At such high heat browning and the accompanying flavor changes are assured, and the changes happen quickly. Stand by with a thermometer in one hand
• To arrive at the desired internal temperature, you need a good instant-read thin-stemmed thermometer, digital or analog. When you think you are near the end of the cooking period, monitor the progress often. Stop socializing, bring your glass of wine in the kitchen and concentrate on the bird.
• If you let the temperature go too high, the meat fibers contract, releasing some of the juices. The meat gets drier, less tender, less palatable. Your aim is to stop cooking it as soon as your thermometer hits 150° to 155°F (66° to 69°C) in the thickest part of the meat. If the piece of poultry is large, for example, when you're roasting a whole chicken or turkey, or even a turkey leg, stop at 145°F (63°C). The temperature will creep up for a few more minutes after you remove it from the heat, still reaching the target temperature.

 

Roasting a whole bird

 

• The biggest challenge in poultry cooking is roasting a whole bird. How can you get both white and dark meat to come out at the same degree of doneness? That is a challenge. Dark meat forms thick chunks in the legs and thighs with a thick bone in the center.

• It takes longer to heat such massive pieces to the correct temperature than the breast meat which is less bulky and with only thin bones as support.
• Creative cooks have found some solutions to this problem, none of them easy. You can rotate the bird in the oven part way through roasting to have the legs and thighs exposed to heat as much as possible and drape cheesecloth over the breast to keep it moist and slow its cooking slightly. (Remove the cheesecloth during the last half hour to allow the breast to fully brown and crisp.)
• Basting frequently also helps. The cooking time remains the same, but the breast tends to retain more moisture when you baste. A troublesome technique that works perfectly well is to debone the entire bird and butterfly the meat (split it through the center so only a narrow piece of meat remains to hold the two halves together, then unfold it like butterfly wings).
• Sounds like a lot of work, but if you have a little experience with cutting up chicken or turkey, you can do the job in about 15 minutes. The butterflied bird, when flattened, cooks quickly and evenly in the oven or over the coals, and it is a snap to cut it up into serving pieces.
• Roasting duck and goose produces delectable crisp skin and deliciously succulent, moist meat. The challenge is what to do with the extra fat. The fat is in a thick layer between the meat and the skin. You can melt most of it out by starting to roast in a slow oven. Later, raise the heat to finish browning the meat. To facilitate melting the fat, slip your hand between the meat and the fat layer (not between the fat and the skin) and separate the two.
• A Chinese Peking duck technique is more complicated but very efficient and elegant. Immerse the duck or goose in boiling water for a minute, then let it air dry in the refrigerator for a full day. This rest time tightens the skin over the fat layer. When in the oven, the pressure of the tight skin helps to melt the fat.
• Unlike in chicken and turkey, there is less distinct white and dark meat in goose and duck. That helps to finish cooking both to the same degree of doneness.