Maciej's Little Kitchen of Horrors: Chicken two Ways

Last fall we bought some chickens from an organic farm down the Takhini River Road called Aurora Mountain Farm. The deal was we get them at a discounted price, and in return, we help process them.

I've known for years that food doesn't come from a box but being a part of the process that takes these chickens from curiously walking around, to plucked, processed and packaged, really gave me a new respect for food. I encourage everyone to find a way to connect with their food as close to the source as they can.

Onto the food:

I'm cooking two of these chickens tonight for a bunch of dinner guests and going two different routes:

Jerk chicken, and a Kansas City style BBQ Chicken.

To prepare the chickens, I removed the liver, heart and gizzards and stored them with my growing collection in the freezer to be used at a later date. I then removed the necks and spines (also saved to boil down with the carcases) and butterflied the chickens to expose as much of the surface as possible to the direct heat source.

Chicken #1, Jerk
Here is what I used for the marinade:

Jalepenos
Yellow Onion
Green Onion
Ginger
Lime Juice
Kaffir leaves
Garlic
Cloves
Allspice
Thyme
Molasses
Coconut Milk

Note: Jalepenos are not the traditional chili used for jerk marinades but making un-expecting guests eat scotch bonnets is a good way to ruin friendships.

Once all ingredients were chopped and or minced, I combined them with the liquids and used it to marinade the chicken over night.

Chicken #2, Filthy

The second chicken I put in a basic salt and sugar brine over night, and then roasted it as is with a bit of olive oil to crisp up the skin. I smeared some of Dirty Maciej's Filthy BBQ Sauce all over it, several times during the roasting to get as many sticky layers caramelizing on the outside as I could.

Unfortunately, as its my own secret recipe, I can't give it out the ingredient list, but knowing that the basic Kansas City BBQ sauce formula is a vinagre, a sweetener, a tangy tomato sauce, and something to give it kick, I'm sure you can probably fill in the blanks based on the other posts on this site.

The general rule for roasting chickens seems to be 20min/lbs plus an additional 20min at 375-400 F however having butterflied these two, I started keeping a close watch on the meat thermo after 1h40m (the chickens were 5.9 and 6.4 Ilbs).

Here is how they turned out:

The Jerk