Curtis Stone shows how to truss a chicken – which is essentially tying the chook up so it keeps its shape and the meat cooks evenly.
How to truss a chicken for the perfect roast
For the perfect roast chicken, which of course has golden, crispy skin and moist, juicy, tender meat, what you need to do is truss it before you roast it.
I've got my chicken here. I'm gonna show you how to do it. Get yourself a nice, big, long piece of string. I'd much rather it was too long than too short. So just cut that and lay it straight across your board just like that.
Pick up your chicken. Now, a lot of people will tell you to tuck the wings in like this one has just been tucked.
Personally, I love a crunchy, crispy chicken wing, so I leave it out. I know it doesn't look as nice, but I promise you it gives much nicer chicken wings.
Then what I do is just take that string up underneath those chicken wings, pull it back towards yourself and just cross your string over like that and go underneath.
Underneath the drumsticks, OK? So sit the drumsticks up on top. Pull those drumsticks in together. And if you like, you can sort of go on either drumstick around just once.
So you see how I've done that. And then you pull those guys together nice and tight. And then just go around twice so it sticks just like so.
What this does is it means is that your chicken's gonna cook really evenly. The legs are gonna stay in nice and tight, you're showing a lot of the surface area so you're gonna get more of that crispy skin and it's gonna be much more even when it cooks.
A little salt and pepper. Olive oil. And then it goes straight into your roasting pan, over your veggies, into the oven nice and hot, about 180 degrees, for somewhere around an hour depending on the size of your chook.
STEP 1
Place the chicken in the centre of 1m length of kitchen string, breast side up and wings untucked.
STEP 2
Pull the ends of the string up from under the wing joints then pull both ends of the string towards you. Cross the strings at the base of the breasts, tighten slightly. Then loop the string around the end of each drumstick. Cross the string and tighten, bringing the legs together. Use a double knot to secure.
