It's said you can judge the quality of a French bistro by their roast chicken. I've had some pretty amazing roast chicken in France, usually with no sauce at all - just basically seasoned and perfectly roasted and somehow on the plate its far more than the sum of its parts. And I'm usually pretty happy with the chickens I make, although I don't roast them - I either smoke them, or "smoke grill" them on the Weber kettle which I think is the ultimate cooking method for chicken. In less than 2 hours the chickens get infused with perfect smoky flavor, fabulously crisp skin, and come out incredibly juicy.
The other day I was relatively rushed for wall clock time to make dinner. I had the 2 hours to cook it, but not the 4-6 hours to brine it. I've always brined chickens and turkeys regardless of how I cook them - got in the habit early on and its just hard wired into my preparation. But I didn't have the time, and I figured no biggie - won't be the best bird I ever make, but should be fine. Particularly since I was using what I usually do - a Purdue Oven Stuffer (don't see the point in bothering to cook a scrawny 3 pound bird). An 8 pounder gets 2 full hours on the grill, which imparts lots of smoke. And I spatchcoc them, so there's also plenty of surface area to season.
It was gorgeous and perrectly cooked as it always seems to be with smoke grilling - somehow there's a ton of margin for error there. Plenty of smoke flavor. Nice notes from the garlic and herbs I rubbed the skin with. But once you got past the seasoned surfaces, the chicken tasted approximately what I'd imagine Soylent Green tastes like. It didn't taste like chicken. It tasted like nothing.
I've always scoffed at the idea of free range chicken at 2-4x the price of the generic stuff. Even though I'm usually fanatic about ingredients chicken was one where it seemed the generic market stuff was just fine. But I guess its not fine. Its the brine.
So now I'm off to find a chicken that tastes like chicken.
