How to get that crispy skin on a roasted turkey or chicken
I love making roast chicken, but I don't seem to be able to get the skin to crisp to that nice mahogany color, like this:
Some of the things I have tried:
- butterfly and roast at 500 (Alton Brown method)
- pat dry and brush with oil before roasting at 375
- flash under broiler
- brown breast on the stovetop in a very hot cast iron skillet before placing in oven
results: #1 & #2 don't seem to work at all -- The skin cooks but it doesn't crisp. #3 only the peak of the breast gets seriously brown. parts further from the broiler are less and less brown. #4 just the parts touching the pan brown
I do have an in-oven thermometer, so I know the temps are correct
UPDATE: added #4
Best Answer
Place bird on a rack over a pan. Salt skin, do not add oil or marinade. Place in refrigerator, uncovered, for up to two days. This will help remove moisture from the skin, which will allow it to crisp more readily in the oven.
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Quick Answer about "How to get that crispy skin on a roasted turkey or chicken"
The Winning Method for Crispy Skin Rub it down with one more tablespoon of oil just before putting it in the oven, sprinkle with a bit more salt and pepper. Roast and baste the chicken every 20 minutes. Sometimes a little bit of planning and extra effort is well worth the payout.How do you get crispy skin on roast turkey?
Rub the skin with fat. Once you've carefully dried off the skin, the next step you can take to guarantee perfectly crispy turkey skin is to rub it with a fat, like butter or oil. Oil will yield a crispier skin than butter because butter is at least 20 percent water, while oil contains no water.How do I make my roast chicken skin crispy?
Reader Question: When You Roast Chicken, How Do You Get the Skin Crispy?How do you get the golden crust on a turkey?
Baking powder, it turns out, is good for quite a lot more than baking. The slightly alkaline mixture raises the skin's pH levels, which allows proteins to break down more efficiently, giving you crisper, more evenly browned results.How to roast a chicken with crispy skin
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Answer 2
One of the problems with using the broiler to brown the skin, is your chicken isn't equidistant from the broiler, so your breast will burn if the rest browns.
A few ways I've gone about ensuring properly crispy skin.
- Separate the skin from the meat prior to cooking. This will let more of the fat render out and allow the skin to dry out quicker. I actually put oil and spices underneath the skin to achieve this.
- Brown the chicken either before or after cooking it. If you have a cast iron skillet as in the picture there, that works really well. Cook the chicken to proper temp, get your skillet really, really hot add some oil when the oil starts to smoke, toss the chicken in (so you don't cook the actual meat much more).
- Buy a blowtorch (a proper one from the plumbing section of a hardware store). Cook chicken slowly to right temp and then blowtorch the skin. Serious suggestion... Alton Brown suggested it even in one of his podcasts. Also see here.
Edit: Something else to consider. You mention that your mother never had this problem. The chickens today might have more fat than the ones your mother used. The skin won't brown completely till the fat itself renders out. Giving it time to do that, separating the skin, and making sure the surface is really, really dry may help. You really want to reduce the amount of moisture that is on/around the skin.
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