A few days later, the second place bird was not the success of its predecessor, mainly because I didn’t consider the effects of the weather. On this cool, wet day, the grill didn’t get hot at all, which means pulling it apart at 148 degrees doesn’t last as much as I want to end the rest period. I carved the chicken and finished with a small amount of parts in the oven. No big deal, an easy-to-fix user error and a skilled chicken, and cooked Za’atar, still great. This $19 Poultree offers a $60 “baker” option where you can buy a Lodge Pan and think that’s all you use, and considering the irritation of the pot pack during cooking, which is a great idea.
Just apply it in Amba Zahav’s More about this kind of kindness) and putting it on the grill is an indefinite weekend success. Not a marvel of burning and pickling, but it’s still very good.
I took the next round in Oaxaca City where I bought a chicken from Pollos José (no matter). To “not leave a heavy skillet idle in your luggage”, I just brought a pole that Poultree calls a “two-coupe” so you can use the pole on the pot. I cooked the chicken on the potato wedges and while the pot and cubes certainly didn’t help the crust was crispy, the cubes from Schmalz were well worth the compromise.
If you cook the chicken in an empty pot (Poultree’s preferred method), it’s too hot and it can really turn into a smoky show, so you have some ideas. My chef Parr and regular review assistant Hamid Salimian made Willies want to cook it in a hot oven, suggesting cream cream and soaking it and then soaking it before cooking in a (not too hot) 350 degree oven with some vegetables underneath. He also recommends marinating the caramel and flavor with chili and trying to cook the breasts facing up.
Modernist cuisine and burning chef Chris Young (a better wireless thermometer than RFX (IMO)) also praised it. He seems to appreciate how Poultree lifts the bird from the cooking surface, a chicken in a barbecue restaurant that he uses as a “suspended bird” which allows the entire bird to make the whole thing appear. He placed it in the pan, putting the vegetables near the bottom of the chicken, and that part of the skin wouldn’t be as crisp as other chickens.
For both chefs, I felt that they might like to think about this new classic way, how to deal with it and what the end result would be. (I hope they did anyway. At least, I’m happy.)
This is probably my favorite Poultree. It requires you to consider the end result you need and how to achieve it. It encourages tinkering, and as a bonus, it can be cooked quickly and easily. If you like chicken and universal kitchen snacks, then it’s a fun and cheap way to tinker with the factory. You can make a quick weekday chicken with satisfying results or get rewarded for adding a little caution to it. If you throw some vegetables in the pan, it’s worth the sacrifice.
“This will make things in the oven more steaming than the bare pot, but at least the smoke alarm won’t go out,” Young said. “Personally, I think you want something like potatoes, to benefit from dripping… For me, there’s nothing like a potato that absorbs dripping from a suspended bird.”
