Are you with me? Good. You’re roasting a chicken.

Roast chicken with potatoes and carrots

Ingredients:

• 1 roasting chicken (about 8 lbs.)
  • If you’re cooking for one, go with a small fryer, about 4 pounds — reduce the cooking time to about an hour
• 5 Yukon gold potatoes
• 6 carrots
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt
• 6 Garlic cloves
• 1 lemon (or onion or bell pepper–more on that in a moment)
• Pepper

Supplies

• A roasting pan or dish
• A deep casserole dish
• Aluminum foil
• Chef’s knife
• Large serving spoon

Start with that chicken. Unwrap it, let it drain a little, and set it in the roasting pan. Salt it inside and out. And really salt it. You should be able to see the individual flakes of kosher salt dusting the breast and the tops of the legs. Inside, it should feel like wet sand, there’s so much salt in there–two big pinches for the inside, one big pinch each for the outside’s top and bottom. We’re talking big, four-finger-and-a-thumb pinches, ok?

Great.

Now set your oven for 400 degrees (204C). While the oven heats and the chicken comes to temperature, go ahead and cut your potatoes and carrots. I like to cut the potatoes into cubish shapes approximately one-inch on a side. I cut about a half inch from the end of each carrot, half them, then cut the thick ends in half again lengthwise.

Put the potatoes and carrots in the casserole dish, drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle them with salt and mix them together.¹ Cover the dish with aluminum foil.

Using the side of your knife, crush the garlic cloves and toss them inside the chicken. There’s no need to peel them or anything, since you won’t be eating them later. Then quarter the lemon and shove two of those quarters into the chicken (the other two quarters? I don’t know. Make lemonade or something).²

Has your oven beeped yet? If so, great. Slide the roasting pan and the casserole dish into the oven. If they won’t fit side-by-side, put the chicken up top and the casserole down low. If it hasn’t beeped yet, just wait. It will soon.

Now leave everything alone for about an hour and 20 minutes. Yes, you can do whatever you want to. Play with the kids, watch tv, it doesn’t matter. At the end of an hour and 20 minutes, pull out the pans and set them on the stovetop. Let the chicken sit for another ten minutes or so before carving it up.

To plate, spoon the potatoes and carrots onto a plate, sprinkle a little pepper on them, and nestle a piece of chicken on top. Then spoon on some of the chicken’s rendered fat and other juices from the roasting pan.

Congratulations! You roasted a chicken, and it tastes awesome.

Variations:

You could try to roast the chicken with some herbs–a couple sprigs of rosemary inside and one on top, or you could try the same thing with sage.

You can use the leftover chicken to make an amazing rosemary chicken pasta, shred it to make sandwiches, or cook it with cumin, lime, salt, coriander and a little water to make chicken fajitas (don’t forget the onions and peppers). My family’s usually able to get three meals out of one large chicken, each different and each delicious.

Go! Cook! And let me know how it goes, ok?

1. If you use your hands, make sure to wash them thoroughly first. In fact, you should probably wash your hands more often anyway.

2. Any fairly sturdy vegetable or fruit will work for this. Essentially, what you’re looking for is something that will impart some moisture and some flavor to the chicken. A red onion work great, as does a bell pepper. Just slice it, and shove the pieces into the bird. You might even want to experiment some time and use a pear or an orange. I’d stay away from anything too fragile, though, and anything too bitter.

I first heard of this recipe during an Anthony Bourdain special. The one set at Dufresne’s  WD-50, I think. One of the guests (maybe a camera man) mentioned his mom used to make him Brussels sprouts with mayonnaise and bacon, and everyone said it sounded amazing. I had to agree.  But when I tried to find a recipe I came up empty, the only mention being a show summary on the No Reservations blog. So I improvised the following: Ingredients:

• One package fresh Brussels sprouts
• Three (or more) thick-cut bacon slices
• Mayonnaise (about two teaspoons for each serving)

Directions Begin by salting some water and bringing it to a boil. While the water heats, preheat the oven to 400f, and slice each Brussels sprout nearly through, leaving just a bit on the stem end. Once the water is boiling, toss in the Brussels sprouts and boil them for five minutes. Use this time to chop up the bacon into half-inch pieces. Once the Brussels sprouts are finished boiling, drain them, then spread them in a single layer in a roasting pan or half sheet pan (or any pan with a lip, really). Sprinkle the bacon over top of them, and then set them in the oven for 30 minutes. When they’re done, take them out of the oven, and give them a careful stir to integrate all the bacon flavor. To plate, get a generous helping of sprouts and bacon and top with just enough mayonnaise to mix well. I made mine the other night, and they were so good I laughed out loud when I had my first bite.

Beyond beans, she’s always liked broccoli and potatoes, and when we deign to visit places like Panera or Crispers, she goes for the broccoli-cheddar soup. Seems simple, but all that cheese? Not the healthiest. By working with Yukon gold potatoes, I came up with a fantastic, rich soup that’s so flavorful, you’ll swear it must be bad for you:

Ingredients (serves six)
six medium Yukon gold potatoes, cubed to equal sizes (about 1/2 to 1 inch)
1 bunch broccoli
kosher salt
2 cups cheddar cheese, separated
black pepper (to taste)

Technique
Chop
Puree

Methods
Boil
Roast

Put the potatoes in a large stock pot, approximately 6 quarts. Add cold water until the potatoes are covered by about an inch of water. Add two tablespoons of kosher salt. Place the pot over high heat and cover with a tight-fitting lid.

Turn on the oven, set for 400 degrees F. Chop the broccoli to remove the florets (the top pieces that look like oak trees at a distance). Keep the florets intact and spread on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle with salt and drizzle with olive oil.

When the oven is at temperature and the potatoes are boiling, set a timer for seven minutes. Place the broccoli in the oven and let each cook until the  timer beeps.

Remove the broccoli from the oven and take the potatoes off the heat. Add half the broccoli to the potatoes and puree using an immersion blender. Chop the remaining broccoli and stir it into the soup, then slowly fold in about half a cup of the cheddar cheese. Serve with hearty bread and garnish with a teaspoon of the remaining shredded cheddar in each bowl. Bring the soup to table with the remaining cheese and allow people to stir it into their soups as they see fit.

This soup couldn’t be easier and tastes wonderful. The starch from the Yukon potatoes gives the broccoli cheddar soup a wonderful, rich mouth feel without adding fat, and since it doesn’t use chicken stock like many other soup recipes, your vegetarian conscience remains clear. Just avoid the smugness. No one likes a smug vegetarian (right, Bittman?).

“[T]he primordial condiment that was prepared by the earth billions of years before early humans ever learned to enliven their food with it.”
-Harold McGee

We start with salt. We must. Before history, before tools, before technique. We start with salt, a basic taste. That to which other food is compared. A fundamental descriptor, the basest ingredient. The brine of ocean, the salinity of blood. It is in us, of us. Keeps equilibrium.

There is no other ingredient more important to cooking than salt. It is one of our five or six basic tastes. But salt brings more than saltiness. It livens all flavors, coaxes aromas from food. Damps bitterness. Without salt, our food would taste shallow, less like itself.

And so first we learn of salt. We must use it. It is singularly important, before all else.

“What’s the most important thing for a cook to know in your kitchen?”
[Keller] paused, then said, “Seasoning.”
“What do you mean, seasoning?”
“Salt and pepper.” He paused again. “Salt, really.”
“The most important thing for a cook to know is how to salt food?”
“That’s right,” he said.
-Michael Ruhlman, The Elements of Cooking

Salt is vital to food. It preserves the pickle, melds in complex reactions not fully understood. It textures cheeses, improves the crumb color and grain of bread. I keep a small shallow bowl in my cupboard, scatter salt unafraid. And taste, taste, taste.