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Broiled Chicken
Dress for broiling, following directions on page 244. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place in a well-greased broiler. Broil twenty minutes over a clear fire, watching carefully and turning broiler so that all parts may be equally browned. The flesh side must be exposed to the fire the greater part of time, as the skin side will brown quickly. Remove to a hot platter, spread with soft butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Chickens are so apt to burn while broiling that many prefer to partially cook in oven. Place chicken in dripping-pan, skin side down, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dot over with butter, and bake fifteen minutes in hot oven.; then broil to finish cooking. Guinea chickens are becoming popular cooked in this way.
This is spatchcocked chicken cooked on a hinged wire broiler over coals, which is closer to modern grilling than to anything done under an oven element. Two things need translating: the equipment and the size of the bird.
- "Dress for broiling"Split the bird down the back, open it flat, and flatten the breastbone so it lies in one plane. Remove the backbone entirely if you prefer; the point is uniform thickness.
- The broilerA double-sided hinged wire basket with a long handle, clamped shut on the bird and flipped as a unit over the fire. A grill with tongs does the same work; an oven broiler is a poor substitute because it cooks from one side only and cannot be turned so freely.
- "A clear fire"Coals burned down to steady grey-ashed heat with no flame licking up. Flare-ups from dripping fat are exactly what causes the burning the recipe warns about; keep a cool zone on the grill to move the bird to.
- Bird size, and why twenty minutesA 1900 broiler was a young bird of roughly 1 to 2 lb dressed. A supermarket chicken at 3½ to 4 lb will need 35 to 45 minutes split and flattened, and the twenty-minute figure should be ignored rather than scaled.
- DonenessCook to 165F in the thickest part of the breast and 175F in the thigh. Visual browning is not a proxy here, since the skin side colours long before the interior is done.
- "Hot oven"Read this as roughly 400-450F. The fifteen-minute par-bake skin side down renders fat and gets the thick joints moving, then the fire finishes the skin; it is a sound method and worth using.
- Guinea chickensGuinea fowl, still sold by some butchers and farm suppliers. The meat is leaner and darker than chicken and dries out quickly, so it wants the same target temperature and no longer over the coals.
- YieldOne broiler of the period served one or two people. A modern 4 lb bird split this way serves three to four.
"Broiler" in this book carries more than one sense: here it is the utensil, the bird being placed in a well-greased broiler, though poulterers also graded young birds as broilers, roasters and fowl by age and weight, and only the youngest and tenderest were fit for direct fire, older birds going to the stewpot. Fannie Farmer's instruction to split, flatten and clamp the bird in a hinged wire broiler describes the standard American treatment of spring chicken through the nineteenth century, done first over coals on the hearth and later on the top of a coal range. The suggestion to start the bird in the oven and finish it over the fire is offered simply because many prefer it, chickens being apt to burn. The passing note that "guinea chickens are becoming popular cooked in this way" catches guinea fowl in the middle of its slow spread through American markets; the species is native to West Africa and is generally said to have reached the United States by way of the West Indies.