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This Buttermilk-Marinade, Oven-Baked Chicken is juicy and tasty.

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You Will Need…

1 whole chicken, about 6 lbs; Paper towels, ½ gallon of buttermilk, 2 nice-sized cloves of garlic, ½ tsp salt, Freshly grated black pepper, ½ tsp paprika, ¼ cup brandy, Flour; 1 tsp dark, stone-ground mustard; and 1 Tbs butter

How To…

To make this dish, you can start out with a whole bird, a pre-cut bird, or the equivalent weight in your favorite bone-in parts. Cutting up a whole bird is fun; it’s also a classic item to have in your skillset.

If you’re going to work with a whole bird, begin by fully prepping your workspace. Once you get your hands into this chicken, you don’t want to have to be fishing around in your drawers and cupboards, spreading chicken juice everywhere. Consider using one of your sink basins as the garbage, and then when you’re done, transfer the stuff you throw in there to the actual garbage. Otherwise, it’s too easy to drip chicken juices on the floor. I have flexible cutting board sheets that I use for raw chicken. I place one over my every-day board, and toss it in the dishwasher when I’m done. As a last touch in prepping your space, tear off a piece of plastic wrap and cover your computer keyboard with it, so that you don’t gunk it up if you need to check something while you’re working.

If the chicken has giblets, remove them. You can use them for gravy, stock, eat them, whatever, or you can feed them to the dog, who will love you just that much more, if that’s possible. Then, do not rinse the bird, but do pat it dry with paper towels.

Now you’re ready to cut the bird into pieces. Follow this video:

Aside from the fact that this is an easy-to-follow, informative video, there’s something about this guy that I really like. I think he’d be a very good lecturer. I can’t quite place his subtle accent, but I like it. Philly? Anyway, he seems so confident and looks so professional. You go, Ian … nice video. Cutting up this chicken, even for the first time, following this video as you go, is surprisingly quick and easy. It took me all of 15 minutes, with no snags. A few caveats, however, you see how easily he slices through the chicken skin with the tip of his knife, and separates pieces by slicing down through them? You won’t be able to do that unless you have a really sharp knife. Also, cutting the back out of the chicken with a crappy pair of kitchen scissors will be no fun at all.

I’m not someone who believes in having expensive kitchen stuff just because I got married and thought it’d be an excellent chance to soak my friends and relatives for a bunch of pretentious, expensive crap that I’ll never use. But good knives are worth getting married for. The ease with which you can slice through things with a good knife, compared with the muscle it takes to do so with a bad knife, is in no way subtle. Plus, a good knife will last the rest of your life (as well as a few of your descendants’ lives). I decided to pop for some nice shears, because my regular ones suck. Undoubtedly, a good knife and good shears are a big part of what made this easy.

So, now you’ve got your chicken in a bucket (or a Tupperware, or a Ziploc, or whatever). Clean up thoroughly. Use some bleach, for God’s sake. Microwave your sponge. And take out the garbage, because if you don’t, you are going to wake up to a real, disgusting stink! Then, get out a half-gallon of buttermilk, and cover the chicken in it. How easy is that for a marinade? You’ll probably have leftover buttermilk; make pancakes in the morning. Toss the chicken in the fridge and let it sit there until you’re interested in dinner tomorrow.

Time to make dinner. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Get out your best friend, the 12-inch cast iron skillet. Mince two nice-sized cloves of garlic and sprinkle them into the skillet. Sprinkle ¼-tsp salt evenly into the skillet, and match that with a nice dousing of course, freshly ground black pepper. Finally, sprinkle ¼-tsp. of paprika evenly into the pan. Then, add the chicken. Once piece at a time, lift the chicken out of its buttermilky grave, and let the buttermilk drip off. Give it a shake or two in the sink to encourage this. Then, lay it into the pan. Once they’re all in there, sprinkle another ¼-tsp of salt, ¼-tsp paprika, and another nice dousing of pepper over the whole thing. Now for the best part: pour in a scant ¼-cup of brandy.

Now you’re ready to bake. Grab your temperature probe and slide it into the thickest part of one of the breast halves. Pop the pan into the oven. It’ll take the chicken 30-45 minutes to come to temperature (165°F). Once it does, remove the breasts to a cutting board, and return the pan to the oven for an additional five minutes. Use that time to nuke some green or wax beans, reheat some cauliflower mash, set the table, practice the piano, and try to figure out which page of latest GQ has the Style Guy.

Time’s up. Take the pan out of the oven, remove all the chicken, pour the juices into a fat separator, and pour the defatted juice back into the pan. Turn up the heat, high. While the juices come to a boil, stir a moderately heaping Tbs. of flour and just enough water to turn it into a paste, in a coffee cup or whatnot. A spoonful at a time, stir in hot juices from the pan until you think you’ve increased the amount of the paste by about 50%. Then, whisk it into the pan. In about a minute, it should thicken the sauce. Once it does, flame off. Check for salt. Then, whisk in a tsp of dark, stone-ground mustard. Taste once more, adjusting as necessary, and then stir in a Tbs of butter. Pour the sauce into a small bowl, place the chicken back into the pan, and then pour the sauce over the chicken.

Enjoy it with Ginger-Whiskey Carrots!

Buttermilk-Marinade, Oven-Baked Chicken

You’ll wind up with enough to serve probably six. However, chickens are being bred with Frankenbreasts these days, that are so huge and so meaty, I can eat half of one breast-half, and feel that it’s an ample serving (with sides, of course).

Here’s a similar recipe that I did not try, but would like to: Buttermilk Chive Roasted Chicken

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Credits for all images: Make It Like a Man! Hover over image and/or green text for more information.

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