The best chicken ever made?

EconEats

If you thought cooking a chicken was taking it out of the plastic packet and sticking it in the oven, you were wrong. The following procedure tests Heston Blumenthal method of cooking a the humble chook.
1. Brine the chicken for a number of hours. I used a 5 percent brine solution for half a day. Rinse the chicken well, I soaked it for a further hour in plain tap water.

2. Copying the Chinese technique of getting crispy skin on their roast duck, the chicken is placed into boiling water for 30 seconds, and cooled in an ice bath. This perhaps releases fat under the skin thus removing moisture (? no idea really).

3. Leave the chicken in the fridge uncovered overnight to dry out the skin (below on the left re on the left after 20 hours in the fridge uncovered). 
4. Place the chicken in the oven at incredibly low heat, the lowest the oven goes. I got mine to around 90 degrees Celsius until the internal temperature reaches  62 degrees. Mine took around 2 hours. See on the picture below, on the right, the chicken has no color at this stage. 

5. Rest out of the oven for around 45 minutes, then turn the oven up to as hot as it can go, at least 220 degrees celcius. Once the oven reaches temperature blast the chicken for 10-20 minutes.

Above the juiciest bird I have ever eaten, with amazingly crispy skin. I have never had the thigh and breast perfectly cooked together. The middle picture is the underside of the breast and thigh when carved straight off the bone. The picture on the right shows the carved breast. The answer is the very low cooking temperature at the beginning. The brine also helped to keep the breast moist.

Tasting notes: A little salty, either reduce brine time, or brine concentration. Try leaving out the blanch phase, or even the rest in the fridge.

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