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Planked Chicken
1/4 cup butter Red pepper, Green pepper, Parsley, Duchess potatoes} 1/4 tablespoon each, finely chopped 1 teaspoon finely chopped onion 1/2 clove garlic, finely chopped 1 teaspoon lemon juice 8 mushroom caps Cream the butter, add pepper, parsley, onion, garlic, and lemon juice. Split a young chicken as for broiling, place in dripping-pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dot over with butter, and bake in a hot oven until nearly cooked. Butter plank, arrange a border of Duchess Potatoes close to edge of plank, and remove chicken to plank. Clean, peel, and saute mushroom caps, place on chicken, spread over prepared butter, and put in a very hot oven to brown potatoes and finish cooking chicken. Serve on the plank.
A two-stage roast: the chicken is started in a dripping-pan and finished on an oiled hardwood plank ringed with piped potato. The plank is the whole point, and it needs preparation before anything touches it.
- The plankA cooking plank is a slab of untreated hardwood, oak being the usual choice. Period and later practice was to season a new plank with fat and gentle heat before use, and the recipe here calls for buttering it before the food goes on; an unseasoned or thin board is liable to scorch and crack. A thin cutting board is not a substitute.
- Oven temperatures"Hot oven" for the first stage corresponds to roughly 400-425F; the finishing "very hot oven" to roughly 475-500F, hot enough to color the potato border quickly, so watch it.
- Doneness, not clock timeThe recipe gives no times because the bird's size decides them. Take the split chicken to about 165F at the thickest part of the thigh; roast it to roughly 150F in the dripping-pan, then let the plank stage finish it while the potatoes brown.
- Size of birdA "young chicken" for broiling in this period was a small bird, on the order of 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 lb, split as for broiling. A modern 3 to 3 1/2 lb chicken, spatchcocked, works and serves two to three; anything larger will not finish in the short second stage.
- Duchess potatoesRiced or sieved potato beaten with butter, egg yolk and seasoning, piped through a large star tube. Pipe the border while the potato is still warm and stiff; the recipe wants it close to the edge of the plank.
- The compound butter"1/4 tablespoon each" of the chopped peppers and parsley is about 3/4 teaspoon each — a very small amount, and deliberately so, since this is a finishing butter spread on at the last moment rather than a sauce. Make it ahead and keep it cold so it holds shape until it hits the hot chicken.
- Mushroom capsModern cultivated mushrooms need no peeling; wipe them and trim the stems. Saute in butter over fairly high heat until they release and reabsorb their liquid, or they will weep onto the chicken in the oven.
- ServingThe plank goes to the table, so set it on a metal tray or thick trivet — it comes out of a 500F oven and will mark a table or crack a cold stone counter.