12monthsofcooking.com

I haven’t posted anything for a while but I haven’t been idle. Rather I’ve just been “planning deeply” ( is this ‘deliberate haste’?).

This month’s recipe was herb-roasted Turkey. Magazine schedules being what they are I received this issue in early October. It seemed a little early to begin the holiday season, so I wasn’t really in the mood to cook a turkey. I could have waited for Thanksgiving but then my wife prefers when I cook something other than a Turkey (currently planning a goose, and a ham). So I decided to just try this with a chicken and not wait for Thanksgiving.

The salting process was quite straightforward, I used fresh herbs rather than dried ones, and reduced the amount of everything given that a chicken was much smaller. I also went ahead and stuffed the chicken with an onion-sage & sausage stuffing. A lot of cooking experts frown on stuffing poultry as it “slows things down” ( what is the rush exactly?). I’ve never agreed with that, it’s much more fun to do a stuffing (and it’s a reliable crowd-pleaser) ! The end-result was beautiful the chicken was a beautiful golden roast color, and there was a fragrant herb aroma in the kitchen.

The chicken was incredibly moist and very flavorful. And the real star of the show was the gravy, it was absolutely fantastic. The combination of mustard with the rosemary was unbeatable ( my wife raved about the gravy). Normally I find that ’simple dishes’ like roast chicken are incredibly hard to get right. This was close to perfect.

The big question though is salting better than brining ? I’m not sure I can give the definitive answer with just one attempt. Brining has proven itself to me over the years, this seemed a little too magical. But still this was quite good, I’d definitely try this again !