Pan fried Ontario Pickeral, served with sautéed ramps (wild leeks) and bacon, on top of sweet maple carrots. Ontario spring on a plate!

01 from How To Destroy Angels on Vimeo.

Recently I have started to touch up my poultry roasting techniques…  On Monday I roasted a 14lb fresh Ontario turkey (pictured above), and today I roasted a medium sized kosher chicken…

For the turkey, I brined it for 12hrs, dried it off, and let it come to room temperature before roasting. Pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees. While the oven was warming up I placed a cut lemon and onion inside the cavity along with a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme. Rub the bird with butter (on top of and under the skin), and generally salted the bird inside and out. While the brine would guarantee salt penetrating the meat the salt on the skin would help it crisp up. Placed it covered in the oven for the first hour, after the first hour I removed the turkey, uncovered it and basted it with it juices, and placed it back into the oven until it reached an internal temp all over the bird of 165 degrees.

For carving I removed the entire breasts from the carcass and sliced them, this way guaranteeing a nice piece of tasty skin for all to enjoy!

Carved turkey:

I did not brine the chicken as I did with the turkey, instead I used a method similar to Thomas Keller’s instructions in his new cook book Ad Hoc. Letting the chicken come to room temperature, and preheated the oven to 475 degrees. Then I gave a similar rubdown treatment to the chicken as I did the turkey, trusted the bird tightly and placed it into the oven. Roasting for 25min @475 then lowering to 400 for the remaining time until the chicken hits 165. (about 40min this time)

Here is the finished product:

Crispy skin and moist meat, very tasty…

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All done…