There are a pile of recipes for roast chicken that I want to try, but since I'm usually cooking for one person, roasting a whole chicken is generally not in the cards (unless it's a Cornish game hen). Last night I compromised by baking some pieces of a cut-up kosher chicken.
I used the recipe for "Chicken Baked with Honey and Soy Sauce" from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines. It's a Chinese recipe The Frug got from a Roman prince (well, that's what the cookbook says). It's pretty simple. First you marinate the chicken in two tablespoons each of dark soy sauce, honey and sesame oil. (The hardest part of the whole exercise was getting the crystallized honey out of its squeeze bottle.) Then you bake it, starting at 350 for 15 minutes, then 325 for 20 minutes and finally 300 for a half-hour, basting periodically. I mistakenly turned the oven up to 375 rather than down (yikes!), but it seemed to not matter in the final analysis.
The chicken probably could've baked a tad longer to remove the bits of pink at the bone, but it wasn't what I'd call underdone, either. The meat was juicy and tender, thanks to the marinade. The skin was crisp, and flavored intensely with the dark soy sauce. The next time I try this, I might use regular soy sauce to lighten it up just a bit.
2 comments:
You can stick the jar of crystallized honey into some warm water to soak to get it running again. Or, less desirably, use a low setting in a microwave.
Hi backyard chef,
No microwaves around here, thankfully. I should've tried the warm water, but by the time I got the honey out, I was already in cooking mode. I guess I thought the water would take too long. The next time I need to use honey, however, I think I'll heat it before I get started on putting the meal together.
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