Although I am open about my love for Costco, one thing I am not a huge fan of is their whole organic chickens. Although they are sizable, well-priced, and organic, the one failing they have is that they are not air-chilled. What does that mean? It means that instead of being hung and air-dried, they are instead packed in water and then sealed. What this ultimately results in is a massive amount of excess water (and thus wetness) when you defrost the chicken and get it ready for roasting. This causes problems if you are concerned with having extremely crispy skin. The only way to get crispy chicken skin is to separate the skin from the chicken flesh, and then make sure it’s as dry as possible by sopping out any excess wetness on the external surface (and in the cavity). Getting an air-chilled chicken is the faster and easier route to the holy land of crispy chicken skin. Having a regular chicken will result in spots that will never fully dry out, even if you leave the chicken uncovered in your fridge overnight (which I always do before roasting a whole chicken). Neither of the whole Costco chickens that were packed in water ever achieved the ultimate Crispy Chicken Skin status that I wanted. But tonight’s air-chilled Whole Foods whole chicken did.

And it was delectable and glorious. Though Chris complained when I served the breast first (when you roast chicken, the breast will always be the most succulent on the day of; and every day after that, it just gets worser and drier. That’s just white meat for you). “Why do we have to eat breast? Why can’t we just have all dark meat? F— breast.”

That’s not really how a whole chicken works…