Brick Chicken Recipe

"It's a lovely thing because it's actually fairly simple to make."

Servings: 2
Prep time: 30 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients
1 whole chicken
kosher salt and black pepper, freshly ground
shot's worth of vegetable oil
brick or other weight
3 tablespoons chicken stock
3 tablespoons cold butter, cubed into ¼-inch pieces
fresh lemon juice, to taste

Directions

1. Place a 10-12" frying pan over low heat. Let sit for a few minutes to heat up.

2. Dry chicken very well. (If you don't, it will spit boiling fat and water at you, which is unpleasant). Salt and black pepper both sides liberally.

3. Increase the heat on your pan until the flames are just starting to lick up the sides of the pan. Add the equivalent of a shot's worth of vegetable oil.

4. Slide the chicken into the pan, skin side down. Place your weight on top.

5. After 1 minute, decrease the heat so that it is as high as possible without starting to lick up the outside of the curve on the pan.

6. After about 2 minutes, lift the weight and lift the chicken a bit with the tongs so that you can see the skin. As soon as you see that it has started to develop a nice golden brown color, turn your heat down to medium-low.

7. These chickens can take anywhere from 8-13 minutes, depending on how fat the breast is. If the skin is a beautiful deep golden color, your meat is probably cooked through. But poke the meat in the thickest part with your finger. If it feels spongy, it is not quite done; if it feels tender—but not spongy—it is done. If it is very firm, you have sadly overcooked it. Don't worry! You'll get it next time.

8. Remove chicken from the pan and quickly press down on the skin with a paper towel. Dump grease (not in your sink), but reserve pan with the fond.

9. For the pan sauce: Add chicken stock to the hot pan to deglaze it.

10. Turn heat down to low and add the butter. Shake pan over the flame (like you if you were making Jiffy Pop), until the butter emulsifies. It should become thick-ish and opaque. If it is thin and oily, then your sauce broke. Don't worry! You'll do better next time. The likely culprit? Your pan was too hot, or you did not move the pan around enough.

11. Remove from heat and add lemon juice to taste. Pour sauce onto a plate, and place the chicken on top.

12. It is best to have all our sauce ingredients ready so that you can make this very very quickly. It should really only take about a minute. You really want to be able to eat this chicken very soon after it comes out of the pan, as the skin will lose it's perfect crispiness fairly rapidly.

From How-To: Make Brick Chicken