How NYC’s Best Grilled Chicken is Made (Michelin Star) | Made to Order | Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit joins Chef Jassimran Singh, Executive Chef at Michelin Star restaurant Crown Shy, to make their signature grilled chicken. Perfected by the late Chef Jamal James Kent, Crown Shy’s grilled chicken is their number one dish–so popular that guests make reservations just to enjoy it.

00:00 Intro
00:43 Breaking down the chicken
02:38 Marinating the chicken
04:44 Making Citrus Gastrique
06:49 Making signature hot sauce
08:44 Grilling chicken
10:54 Carving and plating

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[upbeat music] – I am Jassimran Singh. I’m the executive chef of Crown Shy. Today we will be doing
the best roast chicken. It’s our number one dish to be honest. People actually come to
Crown Shy for this chicken. [bell dinging]
[elegant music] [upbeat music] Crown Shy neighborhood
restaurant we opened in 2019. We didn’t want it to feel
like it’s so high end. So first thing we wanted
to work is citrus marinated and habanero brined
chicken, which is really, really delicious, spicy, tangy
and connects with people. A key marker for a roast chicken
is the perfect crispy skin and a real moist meat. It is hard to achieve
but it’s not not possible and you can definitely do it at home. Let me show you how. [upbeat music] Here’s the chicken, which
is Hudson Valley chicken. It’s a 40 day old chicken
and it’s about like three and a half pounds but we get
it with a head and a feet on. We keep the feet on for presentation so when we get your whole
chicken we can use the other bones to make chicken stock. And then chicken jus that turns into like our sauce for the chicken. So we wanted to use the whole animal. Then I’m just gonna like go
through the through the head. We don’t do anything with that. The smaller part of arm,
this goes for the chicken jus and then we flip the chicken upside down and make the cut here at the back, just try to save all the skin, right? That’s like the most important thing. If you have a tear when you cook it ’cause the chicken will expand, it will just rupture the whole thing. And you’re trying to keep
as much skin as possible because that will help us later keep the chicken, the skin crispy. We keep the breast bones intact to protect it from getting dry ’cause it’s a more leaner muscle. So that’s like a cushion for us. And from now we’ll just
cut the chicken in half. You split it in half but
like you gotta be careful with the skin and you’re just
making a perfect incision. So when you flip the chicken, the skin is fully, fully intact. So when you cook it,
obviously it’s gonna shrink. But now we have a extra piece of skin, it will come back perfectly
right around the edge of the chicken breast and in the legs. I’m de-boning the the thigh
meat and then the legs, thighs and the legs have more fat but they need longer cooking
time than the breast. So just to even out the process, we need to have no bones in the thigh and the leg. You gotta feel where the bones are and then you just like scrape a little bit so you can see actual physical bone and then from there you
can just slide your knife around it to clear it out. Always it will be really
hard for people at home. This is like not the most easiest process but it’s a little tedious because we want to keep the foot intact and
that’s your half chicken, breast bones intact
deboned thigh, deboned leg. So these chickens are broken
down and ready to marinate. So we’re gonna marinate
it for like 24 hours. [upbeat music] So this marinate is basically
a citrus brine which is made of citrus juice. We just blending it all
together then putting in a Lexan and then putting chickens in it. We’re gonna go in batches. Marinating chicken is really important. If you want to put any
seasoning into it, you have to marinate chicken and you have to give it at least six hours and make sure like your marinate or your brine is actually a
little aggressively seasoned ’cause it’s not gonna translate a 100%. So now once we have the
liquid you can start throwing your salt in there. People often like scared that they’re gonna season
their chicken with salt. I think people need to understand it takes a lot of salt to over season the chicken. It also helps break down
the chicken a little more. And when you cook a chicken at home, sometimes the chicken’s dry. By marinating you can also avoid that. We are gonna do another round. If you’re do it at home,
try to do it a batch. It just like breaks down
the chilies really well. We blend it completely ’cause we want as spicy as it could be. The more seeds are blended,
the more spicier they are. And now we’re gonna add
all our juices into it. Grapefruit juice, lemon juice,
lime juice, ginger juice, mix the salt, mix all the juices together. So our marinade’s ready and we are gonna just
transfer our chickens into it and it’s gonna live here in
the marinade for 24 hours. Anything past that because
it has a lot of acid in it, it start cooking the chicken. You’ll label this. So they are chicken out of the marinade, chickens are marinating and there’s a marinade for
other chickens to come in. So we’re gonna just wash these chickens out of the marinade now. So I have some chickens over
here which are marinated yesterday, 24 hours ago. We’re gonna just rinse ’em and we’re gonna take ’em upstairs with us. You can keep the marinade on. For us, we need to take
it off because it will eventually start burning. The spices will burn, the chili will burn before
like chicken will be cooked. So that’s why we wash it off. And then from there we dry it
for like a couple of hours. We want the skin to be dry because if there’s any moisture,
it won’t get that crispy. Pat around the skin. We also only rinse the skin. So like in the other part
you can see the chilies and everything is still in there. From here we’re gonna
transfer back into the walk-in and let it dry for four hours. [upbeat music] So we’re gonna make the citrus gastrique. A gastrique means it’s a French term, means caramelized sugar. And then we add this to our chicken jus to make it flavorful. In the final dish, when we
put the chicken on the plate and then we hit it with the citrus jus, this gastrique will go into jus, make the jus a little sweeter
tan gear and an acidic. The trick I like to do is to keep all the juices little hot or warm so it doesn’t seed the sugar. The chicken has a whole theme of like this citrus flavor
which help us add sweetness and acidity to the dish. So adding sugar to the
pan and just move around. Right now it’s caramelizing. We throw our star anise in it
so it get some more flavor. So the sugar is melted. You see start to smoke. When it start to smoke,
you know it start to burn and then you just add your
hot juices, it’s gonna reduce and we’ll have like a
very citrusy flavor to it. So now we’re gonna give it like another 20, 25 minutes to cook. While it’s reducing, I’m
gonna grade these zest. It’s got three kind of citrus. It’s lime, lemon and oranges. So it’s been 20 minutes now and like you see all the
sugars from the citrus juice and the sugars start to
like really caramelize again and it’s turned into this slow boil. And now this is the time
where it’s ready to go. As I pull it off I’m gonna
add all this zest in here. Zest, we’re gonna enhance
the more citrus flavor so it will be like more
refreshing, more on your tongue. I’m just gonna transfer this. As soon as it cools down,
it’s gonna set super thick. It’s gonna be like a honey. You are adding a spoonful
of thick honey to your jus. So we’re making the citrus jus right now. A jus is a French tone for a stock. Basically all the bones
which we took it out of the chicken was roasted and then boiled for like 24
hours with some mirepoix. And then we are reducing it
to like the proper viscosity we need for the sauce. And then we are gonna add
our citrus gastrique to it. We’re gonna add like a
couple of spoons to it. The viscosity is right there. It’s beautiful and I
think citrus jus is ready. Tastes sweet, tangy and
meaty at the same time. So it’s, it’s pretty good. We are gonna put it on the side until time we plate the chicken. [upbeat music] Alright, so this is the
most technical aspect of whole dish, making the hot sauce ’cause it has to be a perfect consistency, has to be perfect texture and the flavor. Alright we’re gonna
start with adding olive oil to our rondo. Some onions, fennel just for like that sweetness to the hot sauce. We don’t really want too much color on it, you just like gently cook them. Then right away you add red peppers and while it’s all like kind of sweating, you add your orange, it has a pith on it so just add some bitterness to it and then we’re just like
gonna cook it for a minute. Once it starts steaming, we
add our orange juice into it and we just let it cook then from there and we have to completely cook
it to like all the liquid, all the moisture is evaporated and we can puree at that point. So our hot sauce is not like
a sauce which is like you can just like pour over something. It’s like it’s a thick puree consistency. You need to be able to canal it. So that’s why you need to cook
down the vegetable to a point where like there’s no liquid left in it. The vegetables are cooked,
they’re like super soft, all the water and all
the liquid is evaporated. It’s like starting to like get
a little more caramelized now and then we are gonna start blending. Alright so we’re gonna take
a scoop of this vegetable, add it to here. This is some fermented red peppers and now the fermented
habaneros in it, a little bit and a little bit of a juice in there too. A little bit of water. So make sure we have enough
liquid in it so it emulsifies it and sometime because it’s too much fat so it needs Xantham gum to bind it. So it just like does work, it’s magic. And then once we start it emulsifying we’re gonna add olive oil. It’s looking good, it’s looking good. I was gonna, about to taste it. It tastes really good. The consistency is really
good too, like as I wanted to. And so now I’m gonna
transfer this into one of our service vessels. And then once we ready to finish
chicken, we gonna use that. All right? [upbeat music] All right, so now we’re
gonna cook our chicken. It’s a three pot process. We’re gonna grill it, we’re
gonna put ’em in the oven. And then at the very last we’re gonna put it in the salamander. So I’m gonna start chicken with seasoning the chicken a little bit. When you season, just
make sure like you’re covering the whole chicken. Give it like 30 seconds. The skin will absorb the salt,
it will get even more drier. These are the touches which
are very minor in a sense, but they make a huge
role in getting the skin crispy and and keeping it crispy. So now we’re gonna like
brush it with olive oil just because we don’t want it
to stick onto the grill. This grill’s extremely hot. So what we do, we just like
go on the side of this. As a home cook, you need to understand what are like the hotter points. Like I can put the chicken
in right in the middle and we’ll be just charred
in like 30 seconds and you don’t want that. Again. And this is where rendering of the chicken skin happens right now. The caramelization will start here. We want to make sure it
gets like a nice char. I can hear the sizzle on it, you know it’s just like a nice sizzle. I know this skin’s got a char a little bit and I just lift it a little bit. And then I like to use the wing because I don’t wanna disturb the skin. You see the grill marks are like nice. You’ll see like the skin start to form up and then when we put in the oven it won’t shrink more than this. And now just go the other way around. And then same thing
over here, all the wing. So this is what we want as a color. It start to get like nice
golden on top over here already. See like the breast bone is
still protecting the breast where like it’s not getting cooked. You know? Second part of process, we’re gonna take this
and put ’em in the oven. So we’re gonna go in the oven for 13 minutes and we’re
gonna flip it again. So we’re gonna check the chickens and we’re gonna turn the chicken back. But we are gonna give ’em a turn. And the back side of the oven is more hotter than the front side. So this chicken needs more time. So I think we’re gonna go
back in for like another four or five minutes. Our timer just went off, we’re
gonna take out our chicken, check it and then let it
rest for another 15 minutes. I think resting is the most
important part of cooking ’cause the muscles relaxes, all the juices go back into the muscles. So when you carve it, it’s like juicy and tender and fresh. And also like this is
still cooking, you know? It’s not done yet. So when you put it away, it will still keep on cooking but gently. So now we’re gonna rest the chickens for 15 minutes at room temperature. [upbeat music] Chicken’s rested, we made the sauce, we made the hot sauce,
we made the gastrique. Now we’re gonna carve the chicken. You just like go right under
the bone here for the carcass and then just from there
you just like straight slice through it. The goal is to just keep as much meat as you can possible on the chicken. And then from there just go around and you just take the cage off like that and your whole chicken is still intact. The breast is like 99% there. So I’m up, I’m gonna put it on the chilling tray with some brown butter. The chicken which has been
rested now will absorb that moisture also and
become even more tender. And then from there, right
there under the salamander for like good two minutes. All right, so like you just
wanna get like a little more heat into it, a little more crispiness and then from there it’s ready to go. And you can see the chicken’s
like nice and roasted. You see how crispy the skin
is? I dunno if you can hear it. Ha ha ha. Alright, so we are ready
to carve the chicken. Chicken’s cut in five pieces. So the way we cut it, most
of the pieces you will get like the dark and
the white meat together. So like you get both of the
textures at the same time. From here we have our citrus
jus, good, like nice two, three spoons of that. Now we’re gonna dress
our lettuce and jalapenos and radish a little bit lemon,
five pieces, five lettuce. I like working with Tweezers, it’s like a little more precise and like more precision to me. So like we plate this, this, this. Last thing is just the
cilantro on it everywhere. And now to finish the
chicken off is our Crown Shy Classic Hot Sauce. And that’s the Crown Shy Chicken. It looks amazing, you know. And then the idea will to also have with the foot hanging off the plate, the way we wanna do things, a little like a little
bowl, a little crazy. Obviously you gotta take a
bite with like get like some salad together, carve a piece off. Little bit of hot sauce on this. Taste all the hard work
I did this morning, huh? It’s so simple and it,
and it’s so flavorful. It tastes like the nice crispy skin, the tender thigh meat or breast meat. And then just like the
citrus marinade all over. [upbeat music] At the end of the day, this
is like a roast chicken, but roast chicken doesn’t have to be just boring, salt pepper chicken. It could be like acidic,
spicy, more light and fresh. Just like this chicken. [upbeat music]