Dries Hair; Perfects Roast Chicken
Paper towels are the chicken-drying method of the past. Takes longer, isn't as environmentally-friendly and, let's be honest, pretty predictable. According to blogger Domestigeek, blowdrying a raw bird's surface "and probably inside" before roasting saves time and yields perfectly-puffy, golden and delicious skin. So get that blowdryer out of the bathroom and into the kitchen! (Even if it means bewildering roommates and loved ones) [Via The Kitchn]
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10 Comments:
I use a blow dryer to temper chocolate - after melting it and putting in the seed chocolate, I use it to get it to the right temperature (a trick from Jacques Torres). It's great! Just make sure you clean all the chocolate off before you use it on your hair again...
kchocolate3 at 1:54PM on 05/12/08
Somehow this sounds like a cross-contamination nightmare to me.
sfchin at 2:25PM on 05/12/08
i'm no germ-a-phobe, but i just imagine salmonella microbes blowing all over the kitchen. and it just feels weird to use the same utensil in the bathroom and the kitchen.
dmarina at 2:38PM on 05/12/08
Genius!
JustNancy at 2:41PM on 05/12/08
I would like to challenge your eco statement. Blow dryers use a tremendous amount of electricity which had to be generated by something, likely burning something, and paper towels can be from a renewable source and are compostable. Air drying is your best eco-bet, but leaving raw meat out long enough for that might give you a disease so I don't recommend it.
seadkdc at 3:10PM on 05/12/08
I'm pretty sure that salmonella does not aerosolize so it's not going to blow everywhere. Even if the force of the air coming from the hair dryer does blow some of the "chicken liquid" around, it's not going to get that far. Just clean like you would clean normally when working with chicken.
A tool is a tool. It's probably best to be adaptive and ignore preconceived associations.
wunami at 3:10PM on 05/12/08
Interesting idea in terms of multi-taskers.
However, I don't think I'll be employing it.
I wouldn't be as concerned with salmonella blowing around the kitchen as much as bringing a bathroom object into the kitchen. There might not be salmonella in that chicken. But, chances are there are e.coli microbes hanging out in your bathroom. If I really wanted a dry bird, I might just use my clean cutting board to fan the poultry.
Easy enough.
DanaMc at 3:42PM on 05/12/08
My chicken tastes like hairspray.
ReneeRobinson at 4:14PM on 05/12/08
I second seadkc's critique of that statement regarding the eco-friendliness of using a blow drier instead of paper towels. However, being a huge fan of roast chickens and well crisped skin, I may have to try this technique. Since I'm bald, I don't have a blow drier. I just might buy a cheapo one for the kitchen. This would have the added benefit of not blowing mold, yeast and poo particles on my chicken.
Question: does one blow dry the chicken before or after seasoning?
simon at 6:12PM on 05/12/08
This strikes me as a silly thing to do.
I understand that dry chicken skin when raw = crisp chicken skin when cooked, but has anyone really found that putting a chicken in a hot oven doesn't dry the skin enough in the first 2 minutes to produce a satisfactorily crisp skin? (Quick, someone set up a side-by side comparison test!)
If you want an air-dried chicken without wasting electricity, you can probably leave it out for half and hour after rinsing and before cooking it without much worry.
butterface at 1:40AM on 05/13/08