One Hour Broiled Chicken & Pan Sauce

By LRay

Broasted chicken in one hour served with a sauce made from the pan drippings. Broiling the chicken makes the skin nice and browned, and butterflying the chicken helps cook it evenly.

Ingredients

• 1 (4-pound) whole chicken, giblets discarded
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• Kosher salt and pepper
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
• Lemon wedges

Preparation

Step 1

If your broiler has multiple settings, choose the highest one. This recipe requires a broiler-safe skillet. Do not attempt this recipe with a drawer broiler.

Adjust oven rack 12 to 13 inches from broiler element (do not preheat broiler). Place chicken breast side down on cutting board. Using kitchen shears, cut through bones on either side of backbone. Trim off any excess fat and skin and discard backbone. Flip chicken over and press on breastbone to flatten. Using tip of paring knife, poke holes through skin over entire surface of chicken, spacing them approximately 3/4 inch apart.

Rub 1/2 teaspoon oil over skin and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Flip chicken over, sprinkle bone side with 1/2 teaspoon salt, and season with pepper. Tie legs together with kitchen twine and tuck wings under breasts.

Heat remaining 1 teaspoon oil in broiler-safe 12-inch skillet over high heat until just smoking. Place chicken in skillet, skin side up, and transfer to oven, positioning skillet as close to center of oven as handle allows (turn handle so it points toward one of oven’s front corners.) Turn on broiler and broil chicken for 25 minutes. Rotate skillet by moving handle to opposite front corner of oven and continue to broil until skin is dark golden brown and thickest part of breast registers 155 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes longer.

If the skin is dark golden brown but the breast has not yet reached 155 degrees, cover the chicken with aluminum foil and continue to broil. Monitor the temperature of the chicken carefully during the final 10 minutes of cooking, because it can quickly overcook.

Transfer chicken to carving board and let rest, uncovered, for 15 minutes. While chicken rests, stir thyme sprigs and garlic into juices in pan and let stand for 10 minutes.

Using spoon, skim fat from surface of pan juices. Carve chicken and transfer any accumulated juices to pan. Strain sauce through fine-mesh strainer and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve chicken, passing pan sauce and lemon wedges separately.

Cooks Illustrated, March/April 2017, page 4.

We found that the key to getting a whole chicken on the table in about an hour was broiling, not roasting. Butterflying the chicken kept it flat so that it cooked evenly under the intense direct heat, and it also helped speed up cooking. Piercing the skin at ¾-inch intervals helped the fat render and created an escape route for steam that would otherwise make the skin bubble up toward the broiler and burn. To get the delicate white meat to finish cooking at the same time as the dark meat, we used a two-pronged approach: A preheated skillet jump-started the cooking of the leg quarters, and starting that skillet under a cold broiler slowed down the cooking of the breasts. Because the broiler’s heat is more intense than that of the oven, carryover cooking has a bigger impact. To account for this, we pulled the chicken from the oven when the breast meat reached 155 degrees instead of 160 degrees (the temperature we’d normally target when roasting a chicken). Finally, the simple addition of garlic and thyme sprigs to the hot pan drippings created a flavorful sauce with almost no work.