A buttermilk brined chicken is the first kind of whole chicken I ever cooked. Samin Nosrat’s famous buttermilk-brined chicken to be exact. Alison’s chicken asks you to be slightly more extra and throw some smashed garlic and shallots into the brine, but other than that, the recipes are nearly the same in concept.
Brining a chicken requires no skill, only forethought. The effort is always worth it. Salty brines create a tenderized, juicier meat that stands squarely in opposition to every dry chicken breast I ate in the past. It’s because of buttermilk brined chicken that I’ve committed to always brining birds that I plan to roast, even if the recipe doesn’t suggest it.
This chicken was pleasant, a good chicken. The flavor is subtle and nothing extraordinary, which means it’s versatile. Throw it on a salad, a sandwich, on noodles! Or eat it with some fresh Za’atar. I discovered early on in this project the magic of Za’atar, when I first made Alison’s butter-tossed radishes. Fresh Za’atar gives a delightful, salty-sour attitude to this bird, helping it really sing. I served this chicken with Caramelized Winter Squash, which I’ll write about soon.
A personal anecdote about buttermilk. For a long time, the very idea of buttermilk made me squeamish. My mother used to tell stories of being forced to eat unappetizing foods as a child. Her parents grew up in the Netherlands during World War II, a time when food was very scarce. So I understand why, out of principle, they made their children clean their plates. But I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of my mother, freckled with a bright blonde bob, sobbing at the table as she tried to swallow another brussel sprout. For this reason, my siblings and I were never fed the foods that so traumatized her. These included brussel sprouts, cabbage, lentils, and warm buttermilk. Yes, my mom was told to drink warm buttermilk. Apparently to my grandparents, this was a delicacy, and they couldn’t imagine anyone not craving it. But it made my mom’s stomach turn. For this reason, I shuttered at the very idea of buttermilk until I was 26--the age when I first made buttermilk-brined chicken.
23 recipes cooked, 202 to go.
