Alison Makes Anchovy Butter, Rubs it on A Chicken

Anchovies are my favorite ingredient. (I know, we get it.) But making something as simple as anchovy butter is like a whole other portal into the world of anchovies. Make a double-batch to have on-hand to snack on—it’s great on its own, scooped up with a radish, swirled into soup, or, like in this episode, smeared onto chicken.

She’s beautiful, she’s gorgeous, she’s stunning: This Anchovy Butter Chicken with Chicken Fat Croutons is, to me, “last meal” status. It’s briny, oceanic, deeply savory, and everything a roast chicken needs. And, of course, to make it all a complete meal: Schmaltzy, golden croutons, and a bracing, mustardy salad (my favorite kind of salad).

#roastchicken #anchovybutter #buttersnack

RECIPE URLs
https://www.alisoneroman.com/recipes/anchovy-butter-chicken-with-chicken-fat-croutons
https://www.alisoneroman.com/recipes/any-greens-mustard-dressing

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VIDEO CHAPTERS
0:00 Alison loves anchovy butter
0:46 Welcome to Home Movies
1:43 An anchovy tasting
3:45 Making the anchovy butter
6:10 Prepping the chickens
9:38 Smearing butter on the chickens
11:03 Seasoning the chickens
11:54 Baste the chickens
12:17 How to tell if the chicken is done
12:45 Tearing bread for croutons
14:13 Soaking and toasting the bread
14:42 Prepping the salad
15:53 Taking the croutons out of the oven
16:10 Carving the chickens
17:50 Plating the chicken and croutons

CREDITS
Director: Doron Max Hagay @doronmaxhagay
Producer: Graham Mason @grahambomason
Photography Director: Eric Schleicher @e_schleicher
Audio: Yves Albaret @yvesarmand
Camera Operator: Alex Bliss @albertblimp
Camera Operator: Will Colacito @revpooch
Editor: Maya Tippett @maya.tippett

TO SHOP
Le Creuset Braiser: https://www.lecreuset.com/braiser/21180US.html
Rizzoli Anchovies: https://www.rizzoliemanuelli.com/en/classics/
Mejuri Bold Herringbone Chain Necklace:https://go.shopmy.us/p-4205962
Lodge Cast Iron: https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/round-cast-iron-classic-skillet?sku=L8SK3

– All right, anchovy, take one.
(gentle upbeat music)
– People like to ask me
what my favorite condiments are,
and the reality is that
I don’t actually buy that many condiments.
I think things that you can make at home
that like are a complete recipe
that you can then use throughout the week
or your year, I do believe in,
because everyone can make it the same.
And one of those things is anchovy butter.
And I know I talk about anchovies a lot.
They’re my favorite ingredient.
I know, we get it.
But doing something like
making anchovy butter
is like a whole other portal
into the world of anchovies.
(upbeat music)
So anchovy butter is
something that you can make
and use for 40 different things.
Today we’re gonna roast
some chicken with it.
We’re gonna make anchovy
butter chicken fat croutons,
a mustardy lemony salad,
and then we’re gonna
eat everything together.
It’s gonna be amazing.
It can be really overwhelming
when you go grocery shopping
to know what kind of anchovies
that you’re buying will be the best
for what you’re cooking.
I like to say that you should have
two types of anchovies on hand,
your cooking and your snacking.
That said, you can always snack
on the ones that you cook with.
I don’t love cooking the ones
that you should be snacking on
because they kind of are too nice
and too expensive to be just
like melting into olive oil.
But it’s your life.
9 times outta 10,
if you’re at a big box grocery store
in most parts of the United States,
you can get your hands on a Cento tin,
and these anchovies are good.
They’re good for cooking.
If you’re confused and you
don’t know which to buy,
Cento is always a safe bet.
We’re gonna do a little anchovy tasting.
So starting with Cento.
I am a huge fan of Cento.
They did send me a cease and desist
when I put their logo on
a shirt without asking,
but no hard feelings.
I thought it was good promo for us both.
But I am a huge fan of what they do.
Their tomato products, their anchovy,
I think is like to me
a pretty good standard
for like what I would feel
comfortable cooking with.
Okay, so you can see that these are firm,
they’re meaty, they’re pink.
And if you taste them on their own,
they’re salty, they’re meaty.
They’re like very salty these ones.
They are probably preserved
and packed in salt much longer
than say an expensive
high quality anchovy,
which their goal is to
sort of just preserve
the fish long enough to transport,
but not so long that you eliminate
the like beauty of an anchovy.
These are Rizzoli brand.
They are to me like a step above Cento,
and to me, a really good middle ground.
When I see and eat these, I think,
okay, I can cook with
them and I can eat them.
Mm, those are really good.
They’re not as salty,
so they have like a
plumpness, fresher flavor.
And the third one, these
are Cantabrian anchovies.
I think that these are the
nicest anchovy you can buy.
Not this brand necessarily,
although these are good,
but any anchovy that’s
labeled Cantabrian anchovy.
They are meatier, they’re plumper,
they are less salty.
You can see that they look very different.
I mean, most people would be like,
it looks like you just put
three anchovies on a plate,
but to me, I see high, medium, and low.
They’re just thicker and richer.
Cooking with these to
me is sort of a crime,
although a luxury.
Like you could do it
and it would be great,
but to me these are like eating anchovies.
Mm.
They’re very like oceanic,
but also the least salty.
They’re really, really good.
Basically you can use
any of these anchovies
for anchovy butter because
two uses for anchovy butter
is to eat it sort of
raw in its naked state,
or you can cook with it,
meaning you can roast with it,
you can smear a chicken with it,
you can swirl it into beans.
You can like do so many
different things with it.
So for this recipe, you can do as much
or as little as you want.
It’s sort of like, I
think if you’re gonna do
something like this, just
make a whole bunch of it,
because for me, I’m gonna use it.
I’m gonna use it in a lot of things.
We’ve also scaled this down
if you’re just making one chicken,
or serving with radishes
to do it that way as well.
There’s no real substitute
for softened butter.
There’s a lot of tricks out there.
I saw one yesterday where it was like,
if your butter’s not softened,
heat a jar with hot water
and then empty it out
and then put the jar over
a stick of butter and let,
and I’m like, what are you doing?
I think that the easiest
and best way to soften butter quickly
is to cut it into small pieces
and let it sit out at room temperature
for as long as you can,
but it’ll take a fraction of the time
as it would otherwise.
And anytime you’re baking
or cooking with butter
and you, you know, use half a stick,
or you have two tablespoons left,
I always just leave that out,
and so this becomes like
my room temperature butter
that I use for like eating.
I eat the butter.
I eat the butter with
salt all the time, I do.
(gentle upbeat music)
So I’m gonna go ahead and
make our anchovy butter.
I have about two tins of anchovies here.
This anchovy butter’s
also I will say like
very good with a steak.
Something about the
anchovy butter as well,
which is also why dishes
like bagna cauda work really well
is because the amount of fat
coupled with the anchovy
kind of like tames
any sort of fishiness in the anchovy.
It’s like a really good partner.
For this amount of butter,
I’m gonna add like four gloves of garlic.
Pepper, lots of it.
You might not be making
a pound of butter’s worth of this stuff,
but if you are, thanks
for following along.
The anchovies are salty
and they’ll add salt to the butter,
but not so much that
you can skip the salt.
And this is the type of thing
where you could take this butter,
put it in the fridge in a container
and keep it for two, three months.
Like it’s not gonna go bad.
Later when I’m eating this chicken,
I’m gonna serve with some baguette
and radishes to start,
which is very French.
I’ll show you later,
but this is my personal
treat for right now.
Mm.
So we’re gonna move on to our chicken.
The recipe that is printed
will be for one chicken,
but because I’m feeding closer to 10,
I’m gonna roast two whole chickens.
Two chickens from two different places
together on one sheet tray.
Isn’t that nice?
Late breaking news,
yeah, I can’t roast these together
because one is closer to five pounds
and one is three and a half pounds.
Which is less hideous,
when a chicken is splayed in front of you
or when its breast is in front of you?
When you think of roasting a chicken,
where are you roasting a chicken?
Are you roasting it in a cast iron?
Are you roasting in a sheet pan?
Are you roasting it in a roasting dish?
Just curious.
No wrong answers.
– [Producer] Oh, I would use
this Le Creuset dish that you have.
– By popular demand.
Director’s cut.
We’re gonna roast this one in this.
This is called a braiser.
We’re not braising, but
it is called a braiser.
The shape and style of pot.
More than a skillet, less than a pot.
It’s a braiser.
So the smaller one’s gonna go
into this cute little cast iron,
and we’re gonna roast
this one in this braiser.
Anyway.
Look how nice,
they tuck the little,
the legs into the piece of fat
at the end of the chicken.
Do you see?
It’s like this chicken is splayed,
but they take this piece of fat
that’s at the end of the chicken,
and they pierce it and use it as a way
to truss the legs naturally.
So thoughtful, so sweet,
so tender, so farmy.
With our chickens, we’re gonna
roast the usual suspects.
We’re gonna do some onions,
some garlic, some thyme.
I’m keeping that pretty simple
because we’re gonna serve it
with like a mustardy salad.
We’ll have the radishes and butter,
we’ll have more anchovies,
we’ll have croutons,
like there’s a lot going on.
But if you were doing
like a one pot chicken
and this was the only thing,
you could do something
like mushrooms in here,
sliced fennel bulb, carrots, potatoes,
anything to roast alongside the chicken.
You can use thyme, you can use marjoram.
You can use yellow onions or red onions.
You could use shallots,
you could use leeks.
I like to leave the onion skin on.
This is how I roast my turkey.
This is how I roast my chicken.
It’s how I make my beans.
It’s how I braise my short ribs.
So I’m gonna scatter these.
And these onions will
shrink as they roast,
so you want an abundance of it,
because this is kind of like your side.
We’re gonna roast it
with some more garlic.
There’s only four cloves
in this head of garlic.
So cool.
I’m endlessly charmed by produce.
I find it to be like a miracle
that anything grows and that you eat it.
I think that’s so cool to me.
This one has five.
Wow!
So cool.
This one has, sorry, I’m 12.
This one has four, this one has five
and this one has 10.
This is so cool.
This is all grown at the same time
from the same farm, and it’s all garlic,
and it’s all delicious.
Wow, nature.
(gentle upbeat music)
So we have a nice little pile here.
It’s very Virgo energy.
I’m just gonna season
these on a sheet tray
because it’s easier to
get in and all up on them.
My pinch is like three
quarters of a teaspoon maybe.
And just because there’s salt and pepper
in your butter does
not mean you should not
salt and pepper your chicken.
I like to stick a lemon in the chicken.
I find the zest and the juice
kind of like keeps it
steamy and citrusy in there.
So for this butter, because I’m gonna eat
some of it raw later,
I’m gonna set that aside just in case
I do the thing that I do,
which is like touch chicken
and then touch other things.
And I wanna keep it separate to know
that this has not been
contaminated with chicken.
All right, so the rest of this
will be for our chicken.
And for this, know that you’ll also
be like basting your chicken as it roasts,
so the butter that does
fall off, it’s fine.
But you wanna do your best
to just smear it in and around.
It’s almost like working with clay,
which I’m sure we all have.
Little pats of it will go a long way.
But I like to keep them at
the highest point of the bird,
because they’ll melt and
drip over the chicken.
But don’t worry, I do understand
that this is an impossible task,
so you’re not crazy.
But like I said, once
this goes in the oven,
you’re gonna forget
that this was the case.
This is a really slippery chicken.
The other one was a lot more cooperative.
But this is. (laughs)
Now I’ve fully given up the smear.
And now I’m tucking.
It’s not impossible, it just is annoying.
But again, I love cooking, so.
This chicken is just much easier
to smear the butter onto.
Gorge.
No, it’s fine.
I’m past it.
I’ve moved on spiritually.
I’m tucking the butter
in between the wings.
You can go under the breast if you want.
Dot it around the onions.
Again, it’s all going to the same place,
it’s all melting.
You wanna melt this in a skillet
and pour it over, do that too.
See if I care.
I’m gonna drizzle the onions
with a little bit of olive oil,
just to get them started.
I’m gonna season those with salt.
Everything gets seasoned as you go.
And these are gonna go
into a 425 degree oven.
I’m gonna check them after 45 minutes,
but nothing’s really
gonna happen before that.
So the chickens are in the oven,
and now you can tear
the bread for croutons,
you can start to assemble your salad.
But like for me, that is
sort of the hardest part.
And if I’m having people over,
I’m like, I’ve made the butter.
I know what I’m gonna serve for snacks.
The chickens are in the oven.
You’re good to go.
During this chicken roasting time,
feel free to do anything you want.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music continues)
The time has come.
A lot of people will ask me,
how do you know when your chicken is done?
That’s a really good question.
I think that the easiest way
to tell is by wiggling the leg.
Does it feel like it could
be ripped from the bird?
Another way that you can tell
is by piercing the
thickest part of the bird,
and that is going to be
probably the thigh down here.
Does it feel like it’s meeting resistance?
Do you see any pink juices?
This looks good to me.
So I’m gonna let these chickens rest
for about 10 minutes,
and meanwhile I’m gonna tear this bread.
This is a day old bread.
People are always like,
"Use day old bread,"
and I’m like, have you ever
tried tearing day old bread?
It’s hard.
But it’s gonna be tender and crunchy
once we make a crouton out of it.
You could use a baguette.
You could use a sourdough.
I do like the ciabatta
because look at how nice
the big air holes are.
It makes for like a really
sort of ethereal crouton.
Once these chickens rest,
they’re also gonna continue
to like sort of give up
their juices as they sit.
We’re gonna transfer the chicken,
the onions, the garlic,
all that stuff to a cutting
board or a serving platter.
And then we’re gonna take our bread
and toss it in the like
remaining juices and butter,
because that’s when a
bread becomes a crouton.
After we toast it, that’s
when it becomes a crouton,
otherwise it’s soggy bread.
Keep tearing.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so chickens are out.
They have been rested.
They are cool enough to handle,
not any longer too hot to handle.
Don’t worry about chicken being like hot.
People are obsessed with hot food,
and I don’t believe that chicken
should ever be like piping hot.
I think warm chicken is perfect.
If the onions are looking
a little like jammy,
I might throw them in with the croutons
so they’ll get a little crispier,
but that’s optional.
If you’re like, I love a jammy onion,
then you keep the onion jammy.
Save some pan drippings
for your chicken to pour over
and save some for these croutons.
I’m adding my bread.
And if it needs it, which it might,
another glug of olive oil.
This is not the time to think about
how much olive oil or butter you’re using.
And basically just kind of let the bread
soak up all the chicken bits.
So I’m gonna put this into an oven,
keeping it at 425,
just to get them like toasty.
I’ll toss occasionally.
We’re gonna make a salad.
This can be any salad you like.
If you’re like, "I have a favorite salad,"
then now’s a great time
to make that salad.
I’m gonna make like a bitter green salad
with herbs, there’s mustard.
It’s peppery, it’s lemony, it’s tangy.
It’s like a delicious respite
from all of the chicken fat
that you’re about to eat.
This is like a no recipe recipe.
So this is a head of escarole.
I love escarole because
it’s not too bitter
and it’s not too delicate.
I find that some of the issue
I take with like a red leaf
or like a green leaf basic lettuce
is that as soon as you
dress it, it like (groans),
it just like gives up
everything that it used to have.
It’s a shell of its former self.
But an escarole has like
a bit of integrity left.
I’m gonna use a little
chive in this vinegarette.
A little mustard.
Some vinegar.
That’s a quarter cup of vinegar.
Some pepper.
We’re gonna salt and
pepper our leaves as well,
but seasoning your dressing
is just as important.
This is barely vinegarette, by the way.
This is more of a dressing,
because I’m not adding olive oil to this.
I’m gonna basically use this
as like the acidity to dress my greens.
Wow.
(Alison laughs)
I don’t want anyone breaking
a tooth on these croutons,
so I am gonna leave them
on like the tender side.
I do have to try one, for science.
Well, it’s remarkable.
So I’m gonna carve both
chickens the same way.
Ooh, actually what I’m
gonna do is get a pot ready
because I’m gonna have two
gorgeous chicken carcasses
waiting for me,
and that means I get
to make chicken broth.
Lucky girl.
So starting with the legs.
This just like fell away immediately,
which is another really good sign
that your chicken was
properly cooked through.
And if you do this,
it’s not like extra
time to make the broth.
You don’t have to cut up
any additional vegetables
if you don’t want,
although I’ll probably put
it in another onion or two.
And then the breast, I’m gonna carve away.
And I’m not even really carving.
The meat should sort of like pull away.
Go slow.
The right side of my knife right now
is hitting cartilage, it’s hitting bone,
so I have like something to work against.
I’m not just like slicing into something.
And that’s how you know that you’re not
leaving a bunch of meat
once it’s carved away.
This is the best part about
carving a chicken though
is eating all the chicken as you go.
But this is pretty spent.
There’s a little bit of
garlic left in there.
It’s got some seasoning.
There’s like a little bit of meat.
If you weren’t watching,
I would just scrape
the meat from this carcass and eat it but.
If I’m having people over
or even just cooking for
myself and my husband
or whatever, I never
carve the whole chicken.
I only carve as much as I
think we’re going to eat,
because sliced chicken
doesn’t keep as well
or as long as like a whole
quarter or a whole breast.
So little fun tip about how
I like to carve my chicken.
I don’t know where this
piece of skin came from.
Is that scary?
Does it go there?
I don’t know.
And then just kind of take
some of your jammy onions,
or crispy onions, however
you decided to do it today.
And then some croutons.
Some parsley.
And if you want,
let’s say your chicken’s been sitting out
for a little bit, you can always heat up
your pan drippings and drizzle them over.
So this is our chicken.
She’s beautiful, she is
gorgeous, she is stunning.
Little radish on the side,
little anchovy on the side
to reinforce the fact that
you are eating anchovy butter.
And just like a simple peppery,
punchy, mustardy salad with chives,
and I don’t know, this is
like to me last meal status.
A beautiful, perfect roast chicken
that’s been slathered in anchovy butter,
with a hyper acidic,
punchy, almost bitter salad.
To me, I could not ask for anything more.
And I think that the wing is the best part
because it is the best of the dark meat
and the best of the white meat.
It’s like tender like dark meat,
but has like the flavor of white meat,
and it’s fun to eat.
I like the little bones.
If loving the little bones is wrong,
I don’t wanna be right.
Is there anything in there?
I don’t know.
(gentle upbeat music)
Can for the boys.
– Look at that.
– (laughs) The boys.
– [Alison] It’s my favorite bit.