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Broiled Chicken
Only young chickens are nice broiled Split down the back; wipe dry, season the chicken with salt and pepper. Have ready a gridiron placed over hot coals; place your chicken inside down on this. Broil until nicely browned and well cooked through, turning, and being careful that the chicken does not burn. Broil with the chicken some salt pork cut in thin slices. After removing from fire, rub in plenty of butter, and serve, garnished with the pork, slices of lemon and parsley.
A spatchcocked bird over live coals, which is still the best way to cook one. The original assumes an open hearth or a coal range with a gridiron; the method transfers almost unchanged to a charcoal grill or a broiler.
- "Young chickens"A small bird is what is wanted here; nineteenth-century broilers were spring chickens of a couple of pounds or less, and modern packaging uses "broiler-fryer" for something comparable. A standard 4 lb supermarket chicken is too thick to cook through before the skin chars; look for a small bird or a poussin, or use a 3 lb bird and accept a longer, gentler cook.
- Split down the backCut through the backbone so the bird opens out, and press it flat, cracking the breastbone; cutting the backbone out entirely with shears is a modern refinement that flattens it further. Flattening evenly matters: an uneven bird gives you burnt thighs and raw breast.
- Skin side down firstCut side down first -- "inside down" means bone side to the fire. Give the cut side the longer share of the heat, then finish skin down only briefly to brown, since the rendering fat will flare.
- Fire managementBank the coals to one side and start the bird over the cooler part. Direct high heat under a whole flattened chicken will blacken it long before the thigh joint is done.
- DonenessThe original says "well cooked through" and leaves it there. Cook to 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone; expect 30 to 40 minutes total for a small bird, turning every five minutes or so.
- The salt porkThin slices of cured fatback, laid on the gridiron beside the chicken. Streaky bacon is the closest easy substitute, though it is smoked and sweeter; blanch salt pork in water for a few minutes first if you find it aggressively salty.
- Rubbing in butterDone off the heat so it does not burn. Two to three tablespoons over a hot bird, worked into the skin, is about right, and it doubles as the sauce once it pools on the platter.
- YieldOne small broiler serves two, generously. Rest it five minutes before cutting into quarters.
Broiling was one of the few things a nineteenth-century kitchen could do quickly, and it belonged to the youngest, tenderest birds in the yard. The distinction between broilers, fryers, roasters and fowl was largely a matter of age, size and tenderness rather than breed: a spring chicken went on the gridiron, an old hen went into the stockpot, and no amount of butter would move a bird from one category to the other. The salt pork here is not garnish so much as basting, supplying the fat that a lean young chicken lacks. The name "broiler" for a young table chicken outlived the gridiron entirely and is still printed on packaging today, a small fossil of a time when the word described a cooking method rather than a market weight.