My Favorite One-Pan (ish) Meal


You can barely get away with reading any fawning, gushing interview with a contemporarily notable chef without the interviewee mentioning their 'favorite', 'desert-island', or 'when I'm home alone' dish.  It's what they make when they're off for a day, from 14 hour shifts, and it's usually Oedipal-y good.  Very often, it's roast chicken.


Thomas Keller, the king of sous-vide, advocates a simple recipe involving three ingredients: salt, pepper, and a chicken.  Set the oven to 450 degrees, salt and pepper the chicken with a blizzard of seasoning, and roast it, undisturbed, for an hourish.


An uncountable multitude of chicken-roasting opportunities has left me pretty confident in my abilities, and my go-to recipe happens to coincide with Keller's.  But why roast just the chicken in a pan, alone, without a companion?  There is plenty of seasoning, fat, and chicken jus bubbling away in that pan just begging for some vegetable matter to cook, crisp, and corrupt into a delicious chicken-vegetable hybrid.



You just need a heavy pan.  Cast iron is best, stainless with an oven-proof (no rubber or plastic!) handle will do.  All I ever aim for is some potatoes, onions, and sometimes carrots, to slowly roast, be basted by, and caramelize under the chicken.  The high oven temperature will crisp and render the skin's fat, sending a blessed, molten shower of goodness down over whatever vegetables you put under the chicken.  Toss in a few fresh herb sprigs (rosemary, in this case), and they will all tie together nicely.



I goofed, though.  I used a second pan.  My latest obsession with the Asian grocer near me in Iowa City led me to purchase a bottle of pomegranate molasses that I have been searching for a reason to use for a week.  It has a sour, sugary, perfumed aroma that is great in stews and vinaigrettes.  I also stumbled on this recipe that inspired an acidic pomegrante-y sauce the perk up this old workhorse.



One pan, more or less, and I didn't even need the cutting board.  Score.


Soundtrack: Social Distortion - Social Distortion, Babes in Toyland - Fontanelle

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