What is it about a whole uncooked piece of poultry that causes brave men to quiver?
I was out doing yard work and it was getting late. I started thinking about supper. I sure didn’t want another sandwich. We’ve had those the past few nights because we’ve been working a lot of hours. Then I remembered I’d stuck a whole chicken in the fridge to defrost last night.
So there I was; hot, dirty, stinky and hungry. And I still had another 1/2 hour of work to finish my project, plus another 30 minutes to shower, before going into the kitchen to handle food.
I knew my husband wouldn’t be able to cope with cooking a chicken. He can cook pork chops and macaroni & cheese. He can whip up a mean salad. That’s his entire cooking repertoire. Ask him to do more, and he’d attempt it to make me happy, but he’d be in full blown panic attack, all the while trying to act cool. There’d also be 20 questions about each step.
And because he likes to be thorough, there’s always the fear in my mind that if I offhandedly say “wash the chicken” instead of “rinse”, he might actually scrub it down for 20 minutes with soap and a scrub brush. It made me tired just thinking of the drama.
Then it occurred to me that my 26 year old son who’s here going back to college, well, he’s made some tasty dishes before. Mainly pasta, but I’ve seen him cut up boneless chicken before. That’s a pretty good qualification for chicken baking duties, I thought optimistically. So I called my son outside and asked him to fix a baked chicken.
His face scrunched up into worry lines.
“Are you talking about that whole chicken in the fridge?”
“Yup. All you have to do is make sure it’s defrosted, then pull out the bag that’s in the chicken, rinse off the chicken, spray the cast iron pan with Pam, put the chicken it the pan, drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle it with a little salt, pepper, powder garlic, and cajun spice. Then stick it in the oven at 350ºF, and set the timer for an hour and 15 minutes.”
Long pause. I watch panic spread over my son’s face. I think I lost him at “Yup”.
“A whole chicken?” my son asked incredulously. He was definitely panicked. His deep voice had risen a couple of octaves and his eyes were wild with fear.
“Son!” I said sharply, partly to cut through his fear, and partly because I was annoyed. I could have had the chicken prepped by now if I were clean!
“I’m not asking you cut up the chicken,” I said slowly and deliberately. “I just want you to stick it in the oven. Just make sure it’s defrosted first.”
Son threw up his hands and he muttered to himself as he strode back into the house.
I contentedly went back to sticking my hands into the dirt. A few minutes later, Son came back outside.
“Ok, Mom, the chicken is defrosting in the microwave. What do I do next?”
“Make sure you take out the innards, and rinse off the chicken,” I told him.
“There’s stuff IN the chicken? I don’t know how to take the insides out!”, Son protested.
“It’s Easy! Most of the chickens that have the innards in them are in a little bag. Just pull the bag out.”
Son looks at me with disbelief.
“You CAN do this,” I said emphatically.
He looks at me a moment, then resignedly asks, “Ok, so what do I put on the chicken?”
I gave him the list again and repeated the oven setting. Son went back into the house.
My husband walked out a few minutes later with the dog on the leash. “Son seemed a little perturbed”, he remarked.
“That’s not perturbed, that’s panicked.” I replied, then laughed, thinking of the response I would have gotten from him, had I asked him to bake the chicken.
I watched my husband trail behind the dog as it trotted down the road. Then I started back on my weeding.
Later, when I finally strolled into the house, I was greeted with the smell of sesame chicken.
Curious, I stopped and peeked into the oven. Yup, the chicken was roasting covered with sesame seeds. It also was breast side down. I usually put the breast side up for better presentation and for easier cutting.
Son noticed I had stopped to look, and said a bit anxiously, “We were out of olive oil, so I used sesame oil, and I couldn’t find the Carribean spice.”
As far as know, we don’t have “Carribean” spice. We have Cajun spice in the cabinet. But why make a point of it when the chicken was already in the oven baking?
“Smells good,” I smiled at him, then went to take my shower.
The chicken was a success.
I think my son may be braver than most guys. How many other guys would cook a whole chicken, much less handle the situation when faced with the wrong ingredient list?
