You Only Need Three Things To Roast The Perfect Chicken
Lemon, butter, and salt — and the chicken itself, of course.
After months of wondering when I’d feel like cooking again following a year of cooking all the time out of necessity and practicality and as a means of seeking comfort, the temperature dropped 20 degrees and it finally happened: I wanted to cook something bigger than a soft boiled egg again.
I spent the end of last week scrubbing out my dutch oven and reseasoning my cast iron skillet, and then I cleaned my stovetop and the kitchen sink — all valiant efforts to make my apartment feel more homey and less new construction utilitarian, a place where I want to cook and bake. Immediately I put three dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies in the oven and then headed upstate (“upstate”) for the weekend to sustain this newly rediscovered momentum.
Upon arriving at our friends’ house I went to the overpriced grocery store in town and bought sustenance for the weekend, including the few elements I needed to make dinner that night: A whole, 4 -pound chicken; some lemons; butter. There was already salt, the final critical component, at the house. With the advice of Helen Rosner, a food writer at the New Yorker, ringing in my ears, I grabbed a head of cabbage from the produce section too.
