This recipe is inspired by the extremely satisfying “808 fried chicken” at Portland’s 808 Grinds Hawaiian cart. Theirs is better because it’s battered and they serve it with the best mac salad in town, but mine is healthier (probably?) Cucumbers instead of mac salad - I mean, come on. Scroll down for a photo or trust me and read on.

You will need:

• 4 chicken thighs, boneless + skinless
• 1/2 cup usukuchi (light soy sauce; not “Lite soy sauce” or the low-sodium kinds.)
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tsp freshly grated ginger
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (but kept whole)
• Peanut oil and canola oil
• 2 cups sweet rice flour or cornstarch

• 1 cup Japanese rice (short grain, sometimes called “sushi rice”)

• 1 cucumber
• white wine vinegar
• sake, if you’ve got any

For a few of these things, you might need to make a run to your friendly neighborhood Asian market. No, really, some of the best foods you’ve never had are right there. In addition to the above ingredients, pick up some:

• Nanami togarashi - a salty, spicy seasoning of chili and orange peel. It’s like salt, but better.
• Kewpie mayo - the best mayo you didn’t make yourself. The one in the big squeezy bottle with the baby on it.

Who knows, maybe we’ll use these in another Salt & Fat recipe! I’m on a minor Asian kick right now.

Let’s start by making Japanese rice. (This is the generic Japanese method; a great thing to know.) Place your rice in a stock pot or a bowl and rinse it under running water, stirring it around with your hand. Drain the water 2-3 times, until it’s no longer milky. This gets rid of extra starch which would make your rice sticky and shapeless; Japanese rice is served with the grains perfectly outlined.

Drain the rice in a sieve for a few minutes while you prep the chicken. Then, place the rice back in the pot you’ll cook it in and add 1 cup and 1 tablespoon of water. The equation is, about 1.1 parts water to 1 part rice. Let the rice soak for a while; the longer, the better (up to a few hours.) To start cooking, bring it to a near-boil, then cover and turn the heat down to low. Keep it there for about 10-15 minutes or until the water is fully absorbed. Now, they always tell you not to peek, but you’re pretty much going to have to - how else would you know if it’s done? Just do it infrequently and quickly.

Take the rice off the heat and replace the lid with a clean towel. This will steam the rice further; you can keep it here for 10 minutes to an hour, however long it takes you to fry the chicken. Fluff it gently with a flat spatula and it’s ready for the bowl.

About an hour before you’re ready to fry, marinade the chicken. Start by cleaning up the chicken pieces - trim away any loose or large pieces of fat. These are tasty, but save them for another use. (No, really - I freeze mine, adding to the collection as I go, then fry them separately, as a topping.) Cut the chicken into 2-3” pieces, trying to keep them even. Mix the soy sauces, the ginger, sugar, and garlic in a bowl, then toss in the chicken. Grind in some black pepper if you like. Move the whole thing to a large zipper bag and close, removing as much air from the bag as you can. Refrigerate for half an hour (if you’re in a hurry) up to, say, 4 hours.

So, we’ll be deep-frying. Deep-frying at home kind of terrifies me. Or, it used to. Let me give you some tips, earned by oil burns on my hands and a lot of stovetop clean-up:

• Use a good candy thermometer. What’s a good one? Honestly, I’ve never been super-impressed with any, but find one that’s rated up to at least 400ºF and has a clip. Set it up so the tip is near the side, but not touching anything.
• Get the oil as close to 375ºF as you can when you start, resulting in the final temperature of about 325ºF. (Cold food will drop the temprature of the oil.) Any hotter, and it’ll boil violently; any cooler, and you’ll be eating soggy, greasy food.
• Keep your friables very, very, very dry. Splatter is usually caused by cold water hitting hot oil. This is why we coat things in breading, by the way.
• Use a splatter screen when possible. It does other things, too!

Heat a lot of oil - 4” at least - in a very big, deep pot, with the candy thermometer all set up. (Why “candy” thermometer? Candy is made at frighteningly high temperatures.) It’ll take a few minutes to reach 375, during which we’ll prep the chicken further. Remove the chicken pieces from the bag, reserving the marinade, and place them on a big plate lined with lots of paper towels. Pat the chicken dry; completely dry, please.

(If you hate to throw out that juicy marinade, bring it to a simmer in a saucepan, turn the heat down to low, and reduce to a glossy, thickened sauce.)

Next, pour the sweet rice flour into a wide, shallow pan. Grab the chicken pieces with tongs or a fork and press them gently into the flour on all sides until it’s covered; shake off any unsightly clumps. Once they’re all floured up, let them rest for a few minutes while you make the sides.

Quick-pickle some cucumbers; slice them thin and toss them with the white-wine vinegar, the sake, sugar, and salt. Hit them with a dash of the nanami togarashi. Chill.

Back to the chicken - hopefully by now your thermometer is at 360 or so; good, now turn the heat to medium-high or whatever will keep it at 375. Note that the temperature will keep climbing after you first see 360 on the thermometer. If it climbs over 380, move the pot off the heat for a bit. Basically, do whatever you can to hit that magic number, 375. Just keep in mind that hot oil never looks as dangerous as it really is; be careful.

Don’t worry, though, this will be a walk in the park. One by one, tong the chicken pieces into the oil, making sure they produce that satisfying tssssss sound. Do not cover the pot - this will trap moisture, resulting in more splatter. If some oil drops do jump out at you, grab that splatter screen; just make sure you don’t knock off the thermometer with it. You should notice a temperature drop when the cold chicken enters the pot - down to 325 or so - and that’s just what we want. Fry the chicken, mostly undisturbed, for about 10 minutes. (Work in batches if needed.) The finished chicken should look golden and irresistible. If you’re unsure, pull out a piece and check it - it should be done, with no sign of pink, but still juicy and springy.

Using tongs or a spider skimmer, remove the chicken from the pot and dry it on a wire rack placed over a large pan. If you don’t have a wire rack, line the pan with crumpled paper towels. Whatever you do, don’t just put freshly fried food on flat paper; it’ll end up sitting in its own grease. Let the chicken rest for a couple of minutes while you serve the rice, drain the cucumbers, and clean up the kitchen a little. (Watch out for those hot pots and utensils!)

If you made the marinade into a sauce, toss the chicken with it. If not, hey, still tasty!

Here’s how I served mine:

(Sorry about the Instagram filter; trust me, the photo looked worse before. Next time we design a kitchen, we’re putting in bright, even, shadow-free lighting everywhere.)

The chicken was hit with a deconstructed version (lol) of the Perfect Condiment: kewpie mayo and sriracha. That pink stuff at the sushi bar? That’s it.

This is chopstick-friendly food, so ditch the fork. Healthy! Maybe!

There is often half a roasted chicken in our fridge at night, and that’s because there is often half a chicken on our plates in the evening. Given that we like our chicken with a delicious side dish or two - mashed potatoes, green beans, mushrooms - half a bird is all we can eat. The rest becomes sandwiches, salads, and a recent favorite, leftover-based chicken paprikash.

Paprikash: the classic Hungarian stew of onions, peppers, and meteorological quantities of paprika, tamed with sour cream. Let us begin:

• 1/2 roasted chicken (preparation below)
• 1 bell pepper, green or red (your pick - red is sweeter), chopped
• 1/2 large, Hungarian-sized onion (they like onions a lot in Hungary), thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup dry white wine (Sauvignon Blanc makes a good cooking wine; it won’t fight the recipe)
• 1/2 cup tomatoes, diced, no juice necessary
• 1-2 tbsp sour cream
• 2 tbsp sweet paprika
• 1/2 tbsp flour
• Marjoram and fresh parsley to taste
• Buttered egg noodles or spaetzle, or dumplings, or bread, or other starch

It doesn’t really matter which chicken pieces you’re left with; what does sort of matter is that you reserve all the juices, most likely gelatinized around the bottom of the pan you refrigerated the chicken in. There’s lots of flavor there, and it would be a shame to waste any of it. Save it in a bowl.

(This would be a good time to preheat your oven to 300 degrees.)

Pull as much meat off the bone as you can. Don’t be afraid to just go in with your hands - whole chickens aren’t the most fork-and-knife-friendly affair. If there’s any skin or fat, set that aside separately and mince it. Chop or tear the meat into bite-size pieces. You should have three bowls of chicken now: meat, skin & fat, and juices.

Start with vegetable oil in a heavy, oven-safe saucepan or dutch oven over medium to medium-high heat. Add onions, chicken skin, and chicken fat (adjust amount of vegetable oil depending on how much fat you have.) Cook 3-5 minutes until the onions are soft and the chicken pieces crisp up a bit. Add the bell pepper and cook for another 2-3 minutes.

In a small prep bowl - which is awesome cooking tool - combine the flour and about 2/3 of the paprika. Add to the pan and stir for a minute; it’ll be dry and brown and you might get scared, but don’t worry. After a minute you’ll add the wine and tomato, and you’ll scrape the bottom and sides of the pot. Everything should start getting together now, the solids dissolving in the liquid. Add the marjoram and pour in any chicken juices you might have collected earlier. Salt a little; it’s usually a good idea to salt as you go, remembering that as liquids evaporate, the saltiness of the whole dish will increase.

Cover the pot and place it in the oven for 15-20 minutes. When the stew looks thickened and almost ready, add the chopped chicken and cook on the stove over medium heat for another few minutes until the chicken is warm. Taste and add salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper (or other heat source) to taste. 

Stir the rest of the paprika into the sour cream, then fold this into the stew until smooth. Plate your starch (noodles, bread) and spoon the paprikash over it. Sprinkle with parsley and you’re done.

Notes: Paprika brands tends to range in quality quite a bit. The classic Hungarian tin you’ll find in the ethnic section of most stores - Pride of Szeged brand - is pretty weak. Morton & Bassett is good, but the real knockout comes from The Spice House. Share the shipping cost with a friend and the price is super-reasonable, too. Remember that website for all your spice needs!

I like two different styles of sour cream: a) smooth, sweet, and milky, b) thick and tart. My favorite in the a) category is available in your local Hispanic store under the name crema mexicana (or you can make your own). In b), I like Nancy’s sour cream. Use either one, but I find that the smoother cream curdles less and tames better.

As with most cookware, look no further for a saucepan than All-Clad.

When Neven and I started Salt & Fat, this is the post I had in mind. A whole, roasted chicken, one of my absolute favorite meals to cook. There’s something about the whole bird, with the crisp skin and flavorful dark and white meat that I think we lose when we pick up a cellophane wrapped skinless chicken breast. Roasting it yourself is so much more fulfilling than grabbing one of dozens of dried out rotisserie chickens spinning around at the prepared food counter. This is what real, honest cooking is all about and it’s something everyone can do. Once you’ve learned the basic technique, the variations are limited only by your own resourcefulness.

A roasted chicken also activates so many different parts of your cooking brain. You’ll want to focus on the bird itself, where it came from, and then properly prepping, seasoning and, of course, cooking it. Out of the oven, you’ll need to break the bird down before you can put it on your plate. The leftovers are quite versatile, you’ll never suffer a dried out, boring chicken breast again. Then there’s making your own chicken stock, one of the great and simple rewards of being a home cook. This is real cooking, all from a bird that will cost less than a single mediocre meal at chain restaurant.

We’ll get to the variations and particulars eventually, but here’s a basic primer on roasting a chicken. Start to finish, the whole thing will take an hour and a half, which includes heating the oven and letting the bird rest, and most of that time is spent waiting.

First, find yourself a chicken, preferably one that’s raised locally without hormones or antibiotics. Three to four pounds is usually about right. Set your oven to 425°. Make sure there aren’t any gizzards in the cavity, rinse, then pat the inside and out dry with a paper towel. Rub about a teaspoon of kosher salt and black pepper inside the cavity, dust the outside with another tablespoon of kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper. If you have some kitchen twine, tie the legs together (we’ll work on advanced trussing techniques later) and tuck the wings behind the bird — the chicken in my pictures came from a farmer’s market where they used a loose flap of skin to tie the legs. Smart!

A small roasting pan with a rack (not the full sized one you’ll use at Thanksgiving) is the perfect cooking vessel, but a pyrex baking pan or even a cast iron skillet works just as well. Center the bird in the pan then put the whole thing in the dead center of the oven. Set a time for exactly one hour and find some way to occupy yourself in the meantime. Take the chicken out, make a small slice where the thigh meets the breast, the juices should run clear and an insta-read thermometer, should you have one, should register at least 160°. If not, back into the oven it goes for another 10 minutes or so. Let sit for at least 10 minutes (no need to cover with foil, I promise it’ll stay warm and steam will just cause that beautifully crisp skin to get soggy) before carving.

A basic carving technique is to first cut away each leg and thigh as a single piece of dark meat. Next, make a single cut down the center of the chest of the bird to expose the breastbone and separate the breasts. Cut along each side of the rib cage to remove each breast — let the rib cage guide your knife and remove each breast as a whole piece. If you want, cut the wings off and serve those as well or leave them attached to the breast for serving or just save for a snack later.

With sides, a whole chicken could serve four, but halving one with someone else is a real treat. Smear the crisp skin with some real butter and dijon. Rice, a simple green salad, fried brussels sprouts or glazed carrots would all make wonderful accompaniments. A crisp American pale ale goes especially nice.

These days, we don’t have much need to confit, originally developed as a way to preserve meat before the advent of refrigeration. The basic technique is to salt cure a piece of meat for a day or so, slowly cook it in fat (preferably fat of the type of animal that’s being cooked) and then store it submerged in that very fat. But life would be fairly boring if we only stuck to what modern convenience required and the combination of curing and slow cooking in fat provides just too perfect a launching point for a blog called Salt and Fat.

Unlike my partner, I decided to launch with an experiment that I’d never tried before. I wanted to introduce the idea of a confit but thought the traditional duck or goose might be a bit off-putting to folks more accustomed to neighborhood grocery stores instead of butchers or specialty markets. So I thought a chicken, the mainstay of the modern American diet, might be fun to try. And since chicken fat is fairly difficult to come by, and undesirable to boot, I figured a bottle of olive oil, another fixture in every cabinet, would work as a suitable stand in. I also threw in a few herbs and spices that should be easy to come by.

For my experiment, I picked up a cellophane-wrapped “best of fryers” from my neighborhood market (locally raised to boot), an already butchered set of two wings, two breasts, two legs and two thighs, skin on, for a grand total of just under six bucks. I grabbed a bottle of nothing-fancy olive oil — no need to splurge on extra virgin, in fact you might want the richer, heavier flavor of a second or third pressing. If you don’t have any kosher salt, grab a box while you’re in the store (I like Morton’s) and throw out your table salt while you’re at it. I included some peppercorns and a clove of garlic.

Back home, I coated the chicken in about 2-3 tablespoons of salt — it should have a noticeable patina on every surface. Once coated, everything got shoved into a non-reactive pan — a 9x13 pyrex baking dish fit things snuggly. A healthy sprinkle of coarsely ground pepper on top, pressed the thinly sliced slivers of garlic directly into the meat, covered in food safe plastic and into the fridge it went overnight. To keep the final chicken from being too salty, rinse the salt and seasonings the next morning.

Next, the fat. Preheat your oven to 200 (or lower if yours will do it). You’ll need a pot or pan that can safely go in the oven (so nothing with plastic handles) — a cast iron oven works great for this. Pat the rinsed chicken dry, dump it in your pot in a single layer or two, cover completely in the olive oil (I used a full bottle) and bring to simmer on the stove over medium high heat. Once you start to see some bubbles in the oil, turn off the stove and put the pot, uncovered, in the oven. For, oh, about four to six hours — this is best done on windy, rainy or snowy Saturday when sticking around the house and heating up the kitchen is a fairly appealing notion.

At this point, the chicken should be quite tender, probably falling apart. Let the whole thing cool at room temperature and then you can either transfer the meat and oil to tupperware or just stick the whole pot in the fridge. It’s imperative that the meat stay submerged in the oil — it will stay good for weeks this way. You can reheat by heating some of the olive oil over medium heat and frying the meat, skin side down, for 4-5 minutes — this goes pretty well on with some braised greens or on top of a salad with, say, a light vinaigrette.

As for whether the experiment worked, I’d say it was a noble effort if not something I’m going to add to my repertoire. For one, I prefer to avoid cooking with olive oil, as its low smoke point means its flavor changes when heated. But mostly I just didn’t feel like the chicken was transformed in the same way that a duck, goose or (best yet) pork are when put through the same alchemy; duck fat or lard may have been a better substitute for the olive oil, but I’m worried the chicken wouldn’t hold up to such strong stuff. It was good, and certainly different than the boring seared chicken breast at the heart of the American diet, but it didn’t blow me away.