Chicken the Way It's Supposed to Be and Best Lemon Chicken EVER

Albertus Verhoesen (1806-81), Chickens and Park Vase

Ah, this is how we would all like to imagine our food being raised –– beautiful landscapes, fine architecture, happy pecking birds.  The truth is not remotely pretty –– but it doesn't have to be that way.

D'Artagnan chickens eating  5 star diet, Tony Cenicola/The New York Times photo

Last fall, I read a NYTs article that said that D’Artagnan’s Ariane Daguin and some of the top chefs of New York were joining together to embark on a glorious experiment to improve the taste of the humble chicken by raising them differently. “For Ms. Daguin (as for Gallic chefs like Mr. Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud), a distaste for chicken that was “mushy and full of water,” as she put it, was intensified by nostalgic memories of chickens back home that wandered around the yard nibbling on carrot tops, onion skins and old baguettes — and ended up tasting rich and meaty, with an almost chewy texture.” D’Artagnan’s new Green Circle chicken is the result of this effort and they are now available for the general public to enjoy.

Let’s face it, today’s supermarket chicken is a real chemical nightmare full of pesticides and antibiotics, a life lived in an ammoniated atmoshere that is so toxic it makes them blind and burns their lungs as well as being given a diet straight out of a horror film – food that includes animal waste – num. Makes you think twice about cheap chicken, doesn’t it?

Drawing from Opposing Views

Not only that, the chickens are bred so large and fed so much in their 6 weeks of life that they literally can’t move – often dying of heart attacks or thirst because they can’t move to get to the water.

D’Artagnan’s Green Circle Chickens (that are available HERE) are bred from a heritage breed common to Daguin’s home in Gascony. The original group was divided so that each restaurant's scraps were fed to their own chickens so each would have a distinct terroir  from the flavors of their special diet –– there would be a Boulud chicken, a Per Se chicken, etc.  The scraps were dropped off a few times a week.  On top of greens, the chickens also ate stale bread soaked in milk!  The larger flock of non-restaurant supplied chickens are doing pretty well too. They live twice as long as supermarket chickens and are fed beautiful vegetable scraps from farmer’s markets and local farms supplemented by grains and soybeans at an Amish farm in Pennsylvania. Daguin spent $250,000 developing the diet and technique for raising the birds. The result? One heck of a chicken that has eaten well and not spent it’s short life in a putrid atmosphere, sick and suffering horribly. Seems like a win-win to me.

HEINTZ, Joseph the Elder (1564-1609) Still Life of a Roast Chicken

I was lucky enough to try 2 of the birds –– I roasted one and fricasseed the other using my favorite recipes. I concur with the great chefs who swooned when they tasted them last year:

“When I tasted it, I was like, ‘Whoa,’ ” said Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who plans to start incorporating the chickens into his ever-evolving menus. Witnesses say that after his first bite, Mr. Vongerichten was on the verge of tears; Daniel Humm, the chef at Eleven Madison Park, consumed an entire chicken in one sitting.” A group of food critics for the NYTs did a blind test and D’Artagnan’s Green Circle chickens won hands down.

The roast chicken is super easy –– high heat with salt and pepper. The result was sublime -- fragrant juicy meat with a crisp flavorful skin.

For the fricassee I used a recipe that has been on my favorite list since I first tried it in the 80’s – Marcella Hazan’s lemon chicken. I actually looked up the recipe in my ancient More Classic Italian Cooking(1985!) and found that in all these years, the only thing that I had changed was that I left out the flour in the recipe. It’s that simple and that perfect. From time to time I’ve made it with all breast meat, boneless meat and all thigh. The sauce is always amazing.

Fricasseed Lemon Chicken  - Pollo in Fricassea alla Marchigiana

A 3-4 pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces
4 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons onion, chopped finely
Salt and pepper to taste
1 c chicken broth (use unsalted since it is much reduced)
1 t flour (optional)
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 egg yolks

Salt and pepper the chicken pieces.

Put the butter and chopped onion in the pan and cook at medium until it becomes lightly colored then add the chicken, skin side down. Turn up the heat slightly and brown the chicken pieces.

Remove the breasts from the pan (keep them tented on the side). Add all the broth, adjust heat to cook dark meat at a very gentle simmer and place the cover ajar. After 40 minutes, turning the meat periodically, return the breasts and any accumulated juices to the pan and cook for at least 15 minutes more –– until the thighs are tender and breast meat is cooked. If it becomes too dry before the chicken is done, add a bit of water. There should be little liquid left in the pan when the meat is done – just a thick, incredibly flavorful ‘jam’. Remove the pan from the heat.

Put the lemon juice in a bowl and beat in the egg yolks and flour if you are using it. ONLY COMBINE THE LEMON AND YOLK JUST BEFORE YOU ARE READY TO PUT IT IN THE PAN, LEMON WILL ‘COOK’ THE EGG – you want the warm chicken to do that for you – that’s what makes the sauce like velvet. Pour the mixture over the chicken pieces, tossing to coat them well. Transfer the entire contents of the pan to a warm platter, and serve at once. When reheating, do it under low heat so as not to overcook the egg.



Best Roast Chicken based on Thomas Keller recipe

3-4 lb chicken
1 T kosher salt
1-2 t ground pepper
Herb sprigs (thyme, sage, rosemary, marjoram) optional


Heat oven to 450º

Dry the chicken. Salt and pepper the inside of the chicken – add the herbs if you are using them. Truss the bird and generously salt and pepper all sides of the bird. Place in a pan that just fits it and cook for about 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes (depending on the size of your bird). Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

*Mike Rowe has a video about the chickens on Somebody's Got to Do It playing on CNN on 11/12/14 at 9 pm (it may go on YouTube after that).