See roast chicken recipe to make over the weekend – 04/16/2023 – Food

As is the case with basic little black dresses, roast chicken recipes are never too much. Especially not the French kind.

So when Florence Chapgier, a reader born in Paris but living in Los Angeles, sent the New York Times this recipe from her mother, Christiane Baumgartner, for roast chicken with tarragon, butter and brandy, the newspaper immediately tried it.

Chapgier’s name for the dish, “French roast chicken,” conveys its origin but not its unique character.

The special touch of the recipe is the alchemy between the abundant butter when mixed with the caramelized broth that forms when the chicken is roasted, plus a whole sprig of fresh tarragon and a good dose of cognac.

The dish has so few ingredients that Chapgier recommends you look for the best quality ones: corn-fed chicken (“like in southwest France”), VSOP brandy (“you won’t need to use much”), and mineral-rich sea salt. The paper tested the recipe with regular chicken, California brandy, and local supermarket kosher salt, and it still turned out wonderful. So use the best ingredients you can, but don’t pull your hair out over it.

The roasting technique couldn’t be simpler: salt the chicken, let the skin dry a little, then cover it with softened butter and tarragon and bake at 200ºC. When the chicken is completely roasted, turn off the oven and drizzle with the cognac and the broth formed in the roasting pan. Let it rest for ten minutes in the switched off oven to better absorb all the flavors, then cut into pieces, drizzle the meat and roasted skin with plenty of buttery, tarragon-filled broth, and serve.

Chapgier made a note about brandy: turn off the oven before returning the brandy-drizzled chicken to the oven to rest. The one time she forgot this, the intense heat set fire to the brandy and cracked the glass on her oven door (“it took me by surprise,” she wrote). Unlike “coq au vin”, this French chicken is not best flambéed.

To complete the meal in the most classically French way, serve the chicken with potatoes –baked, fried, au gratin or, the best option of all, mashed potatoes—so that they can soak up every drop of the aromatic sauce. Molinha polenta is a less traditional but equally tasty alternative. Accompany with a green salad and a good wine, “et voilà”, it’s ready.

As is the case with the basic black dress, when it comes to roast chicken, simplicity is sophistication – and, in this case, it guarantees a delicious meal.

Roasted chicken with tarragon and brandy

Performance: 4 servings
Preparation time: two hours and a half

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (1.8 kg)
• 2 teaspoons coarse gray sea salt or 2 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
• 6 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
• 1 bunch fresh tarragon, leaves and tender stems chopped (about ¾ cup)
• 2 tablespoons of cognac
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Way of doing

• Dry the chicken with a kitchen towel (or paper towel) and sprinkle salt inside and out. Transfer to a plate or platter, preferably on a wire rack, and refrigerate uncovered for at least an hour or overnight.
• When ready to roast the chicken, preheat the oven to 200ºC.
• In a small bowl, combine the butter, tarragon, 1 tablespoon brandy, and pepper. Rub this mixture into the cavity of the chicken and over and under the skin.
• Place the chicken in a deep dish or a large pot that can go in the oven. Bake it, breast side up, until the skin is golden and crispy and the liquid oozes clear when you insert a fork into the thickest part of the thigh, about an hour or so.
• Turn off the oven—don’t forget this step, because if the brandy gets too hot it could catch fire—and transfer the roasting pan with the chicken to the counter. Drizzle the chicken with the remaining tablespoon of brandy and a little of the buttery broth from the dish. Return the chicken to the switched off oven and let it rest there for ten minutes before slicing and serving.