Spatchcocked Crispy Happy Chicken With Rich Orange Sauce

"Tigerduck set the ingredients nicely to Celebrate Chinese New Year beginning February 18 is called the Spring Festival! Year of the Pig! Chicken symbolizes happiness and prosperity--especially when served whole, serving it with an orange sauce because oranges represent wealth and good fortune they are China's most plentiful fruit. You can serve over rice or Longevity Noodles (which represent a long life an old superstition says that it's bad luck to cut them so leave them whole) to help absorb the sauce. This recipes integrates Asian (orange sauce), then a cooking Technique from Italy (an old method from Tuscany, what they call pollo al mattone), And a Tex-Mex (addition from the spicy smoky rub) a fusion to create this innovation of explosive new tastes and textures. Yes, bricks for the weight which will flatten the chicken resulting in a very crispy skin and a tender bird. Butterfly - Set the chicken on a board breast side down. With heavy kitchen scissors, cut along either side of the backbone, beginning at the tail end and cutting up. With one hand on each side of the chicken, open it forcefully, bending it back so the breastbone pulls away from the flesh on one side. With your hands, pull out the diamond-shaped purple bone in the center of the breast. If you don't have a pan large enough to hold the bird flat in 1 piece cut with the shears, along the center of the breast to halve the bird so to fit in 2 pans. ------"
 
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photo by Zurie photo by Zurie
photo by Zurie
photo by Zurie photo by Zurie
photo by Rita1652 photo by Rita1652
photo by Rita1652 photo by Rita1652
photo by Rita1652 photo by Rita1652
Ready In:
1hr 15mins
Ingredients:
22
Serves:
4
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ingredients

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directions

  • Chicken:

  • Mix salt, pepper, garlic, chili powder, thyme, fennel and cumin.
  • Rub chicken under skin and all over the chicken with all of the spice mixture; cover and marinade in refrigerator for 4-24 hours.
  • Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
  • Heat heavy large cast iron pan over medium high heat, add oil, placing chicken skin side down immediately place a very heavy pan or foil covered bricks on chicken and cook (without moving the chicken) until the skin is a golden brown (check with a tongs) till very crisp about 15 minutes.
  • Orange Sauce:

  • Meanwhile melt butter in a medium hot pan; add and saute onions for 3 minutes add garlic, ginger, brown sugar, water, orange juice and zest, lemon juice, rice vinegar, and soy sauce; bring to a boil simmer for 5 minutes.
  • Mix together cornstarch and 2 tablespoons cold water or Grand Mariner making a slurry; add the slurry to the sauce whisking all the time to keep the sauce smooth; reduce heat to medium low; and simmer, about 5 minutes.
  • Remove the bricks and turn chicken skin side up and finish roasting for 20-25 minutes. Until a thermometer inserted in the thigh registers 160-165 degrees when juices run completely clear, and the skin should be a gorgeous golden-brown, and exceedingly crispy.
  • Remove chicken and let rest on a cutting board.
  • De fat the pan drippings.
  • Add the Orange Sauce to the pan juices. Strain the sauce.
  • Pour sauce into a gravy boat drizzle some on a platter and place the chicken on the sauce with crispy crust up.
  • Serving immediately with additional sauce and Longevity noodles or rice.

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Reviews

  1. I didn't follow the recipe at all so I am leaving zero stars. For the chicken I cooked a whole (3lb) chicken in the crock pot for 5 hours. I used the spice rub (mostly shoved under the skin of the bird) for this recipe and let it sit overnight before setting up in the crockpot. I made the sauce the night before our dinner, too (a lot of my dinners work out this way having a full time job and 19 month old!). For dinner I took off the skin and served the oh so tasty, tender, and very moist meat over rice with the sauce on top. It was very tasty. The sauce was a little too sweet for us, but OK. Would make again but tweak the sauce a little. When I have more time on a weekend I may try the 'brick' method.
     
  2. A delectable recipe which we thoroughly enjoyed for dinner with friends! The sauce was just the right balance of sweet and sour, not too overpowering at all. I have cooked chicken by this method before funnily enough, so I was eager to try this out, as I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to see it as an RSC entry. It would have been 5 stars for us, but I spent a long time prepping it and also the cooking times were out by about 30 minutes; it may have been the size chicken I used, it was a large one weighing in at nearly 3 and 1/2 lbs, but after I had spatchcocked (butterflied) it and trimmed it, it was not far off the weight in the ingredients list. The rub was delightful, as was the sauce and I was delighted to see a "real" recipe entered for RSC with complex and challenging cooking methods - well done! It was a fabulous list of imaginative ingredients - and I am thoroughly delighted to have discovered it - I will be making this again and using the rub for all sorts of other meats and poultry! Good luck and thanks for posting this! P.S. I call this method of boning a chicken, spatchcock by the way!
     
  3. The contrast between the spicy, yet not overly intense, rub on the meat and the sweet and sour sauce was delicious. I'm not a fan of sweet and sour but this one was so good I had sauce on every piece. The skin was crisp indeed yet the meat remained moist. Very flavorful. Its the second best contest recipe I've tried -- second only to Recipe #211526 and then only because this recipe with both a rub and a sauce is so involved and complex to make while the other is so easy. I anticipate trying the rub on beef and pork as well because it was incredible.
     
  4. This one had the "wow!" factor! I found the method intriguing. I prepared the chicken as directed, mixed the rub and let the chicken marinate. I used a large, heavy old iron pot which was perfect. I found two bricks which I covered with foil, and fried the chicken with great doubt: was it going to burn on the skin side?? I didn't substitute a single thing, except I wasn't sure what the cook meant by "chili powder". I only had cayenne pepper, which seemed a bit rough, so used 2 teaspoons flaked dried hot pepper. (Oh yes: the bricks in foil were perfectly easy to handle as they did not become hot and I could handle them with bare hands!) And the chicken did NOT burn! The sauce was prepared exactly as directed. The chicken was finished off in the hot oven. As I had no idea what Longevity noodles were, I made rice and cauliflower as side dishes, and the usual salad. The chicken was scrumptious and juicy, with the crispy skin the cook predicted! I commend this cook for the correctness of her timing and instructions -- it is clear that he/she tested this recipe carefully. The sauce improved on standing in a warming oven for a short while and was totally delicious, to our tastes, by the time we could eat. For the judges: this recipe is actually a hair's breadth away from 5 stars and would be a knockout with a fully deboned chicken. I might try that soon. Congratulations, cook, I loved the "different approach" of this recipe!!
     
  5. This really deserves 5 stars for the incredible flavor. I was kinda put off by the seemingly odd combination of what are to me southwestern ingredients for the rub, then the orange sauce. They worked together perfectly. We do have to add a bit of a criticism, sorry. The prep time was underestimated, by quite a bit. It took 30 minutes just to butterfly the chicken, prepare the spice rub mixture, lift the skin from the chicken and rub the spice under the skin. Then there was the 15 min cook time on top of the stove under the brick. Then there was the time to prepare the orange sauce, which actually took an additional approximate 30 min between the chopping, sautéing and final service. So I would say that active prep time is more like an hour and a half or a bit more. Second comment is that there were no pan dripping to defat and add to sauce. Between the stovetop cooking for 15 min and the oven time at 450 degrees, there was nothing that could be recovered. It was a burnt layer that couldn’t possibly have been used. So our only deviation from the recipe was that we did not have pan drippings. We simply went with the sauce without them. Nonetheless, this was an amazing chicken dish. I can honestly say that it was the most flavorful chicken I have ever tasted. The orange sauce was perfect to accompany this chicken. Fabulous combination of ingredients, Great Job.
     
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