CRISPY SKIN ROAST CHICKEN WITH SPECIAL SEASONING AND GREEN TOUM

Crispy Skin Roast Chicken with Special Seasoning and Green Toum

The joys of bone-in roast chicken with crispy skin abound across culture, season and geography. One easy path to crispy skin is salting the skin well, and leaving in the fridge overnight. This effectively dry-brines the chicken, but the dry air of the fridge also dehydrates the exterior, leading to ultra crispy skin once it’s roasted. The seasoning on the chicken is a blast of flavor inspired by the Italian South, and toum, a fluffy Lebanese condiment made from emulsifying garlic, lemon juice and oil, just makes sense with roast chicken (similar to peruvian pollo ala brasa and aji verde). Here, I’ve added parsley to add a pop of green and herbal freshness - but feel free to substitute whatever herb you like best!


For Chicken & Special Seasoning

  • 1.5 tbsp black peppercorns

  • 1.5 teaspoons red pepper flakes

  • 0.5 tbsp granulated sugar

  • 1.5 tbsp fennel seed

  • 2 teaspoons dried oregano

  • ½ oz dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms - optional

  • 4lbs chicken leg quarters

  • Sea salt

  • Olive oil, for drizzling

For Green Toum

  • 1/3 cup garlic cloves (60g)

  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt

  • 1/4 cup (85g) fresh lemon juice from about 1.5 lemons, divided

  • 1/8 cup (30g) ice water 

  • 2 cups (400g) neutral oil, such as grapeseed

  • 1/2 bunch parsley

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind the dried mushrooms then add to a bowl. Grind the fennel and peppercorns, then add to the porcini. Add the sugar and oregano, and mix until combined. 

  2. At least two hours before roasting, and preferably 24 hours before, remove your chicken from the package and dry with a paper towel. Sprinkle well with salt, making sure to season underside and inside cavities. For best results and crispiest skin, place on a wire rack in the refrigerator overnight - this will create a dry brine, resulting in juicy chicken and crispy skin. 

  3. When ready to roast chicken, heat oven to 425F. Arrange chicken on a sheet tray or roasting pan and drizzle chicken with olive oil and then cover in the seasoning mix, rubbing all over, adding extra seasoning if some falls off.

  4. Roast chicken for 45 minutes or until thermometer in the thickest part of the leg registers 180F.

  5. While chicken is roasting, start making toum by peeling all of your garlic.

  6. Add garlic to a food processor (alternatively, you can use a blender or immersion blender or mortar and pestle). Pulse for 30 seconds, then add immediately add the lemon juice and let sit for 5 minutes.

  7. After 5 minutes, run food processor until a puree of garlic and lemon juice has formed. With the blade running, slowly drizzle in half the oil, then the ice water, then the oil, pouring very slowly to ensure emulsion doesn’t break. 

  8. Once toum looks fluffy and emulsified, add parsley and pulse until broken down.

  9. Assemble meal by spreading toum on the bottom of a large plate. Arrange chicken on top, skin side up.

  10. EAT!

Sam’s Science Tip:

You know that spicy pungency of garlic? It’s caused by a compound called allicin. However, before being cut or chopped, garlic doesn’t actually contain allicin – it has a precursor molecule called alliin, and an enzyme called allinase, which converts allinase to allicin. (The garlic plant synthesizes these sulfurous compounds as a defense mechanism to ward off pests!) Under normal conditions, the allinase is stored in the vacuole of the plant cell and the alliin is in the cytoplasm - imagine if the alliin is hanging out in the living room of a house and the alliinase is stuffed in the closet. However, as soon as garlic is chopped, crushed, or grated, the plant cells have been torn apart, and the allinase is free to immediately begin converting the allin to the spicy form of allicin. In our house analogy, it’s as if the walls get torn down and the allinase can now party with the alliin. (As an aside, this is why grated garlic is spicier than sliced or minced!). Some allicin is great, but in a sauce like toum, which is primarily garlic, too much allicin can be overpowering. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to prevent allinase from getting too busy with the alliin. Alliinase, like all enzymes has a pH range that it’s functional in - meaning it can be deactivated in low pH, and we already have an acid in the sauce - lemon juice! Simply adding the lemon juice right after the garlic is chopped will help mitigate some of the allicin, and make for a delicious sauce that you can eat even more of. 

A final note on emulsification! Toum is a fascinating sauce because it contains SO MUCH GARLIC. The cellular components of garlic are what help emulsify this sauce (AKA keep the oil droplets spread out among the water droplets and not coalescing all together). First, there’s sugars and long chain carbohydrates (fibers etc) that thicken the water in the sauce, and slow things down from separating, and then there’s these molecules called saponins, which are generally water and fat soluble - making them the perfect bridge molecule that will keep your toum fluffy, even, and emulsified. THANKS GARLIC WE LOVE YOU. 


Sam Lopane