“Monday Chicken Dinner” from “Start Here”

Kirstin: Unfortunately, this was a good recipe. A REALLY good recipe. I say that because I have tried many, many roast chicken recipes over the years and thought I had tried all the recipes. And this recipe involved a bit of preparation the day beforehand (which I was not expecting, so I had to cook something else, and then serve the chicken the next day). Surely all that faffing around would not make any difference? Unfortunately, it did. Tate described it as “like chicken, if you took a whole chicken and condensed into one bite of chicken. It’s the epitome of chicken. It’s like I’m eating the platonic form of chicken.” All the preparation the day before — the dry brining, the spatchcocking, the boiling and drying of the potatoes — it all made a huge difference. Cooking the vegetables in the chicken juices is genius, too. Damn! This sets a new standard for roast chicken. The idea of the recipe is to prepare it on a Sunday, so you can serve it for dinner on a Monday, the worst day of the week. But this is, unfortunately, so good that I’ll be making it to serve on Sundays. It’s one of those recipes that is worth the price of admission for the whole book.