After 2.5 years of never buying any whole chicken, I finally got a whole, organic, air-chilled chicken from Whole Foods this past week since it was on sale. Nowadays, I always chuckle a little to myself thinking about “whole chickens” in the U.S. because when you buy a “whole chicken,” it is never really whole unless you are getting it alive or directly from a farm and asking for it to be presented to you in a certain way. What I mean is: if you pick up a whole chicken at Albertson’s, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or a related grocery store chain, your “whole chicken” will have no head, neck, or feet attached. All the organs will be removed. And of course, it will be completely de-feathered. If you buy a non-kosher bird, you’ll likely have a little wax packet on the inside cavity of the bird that contains its heart and neck. Our experience of buying a “whole chicken” in the U.S. is so far removed from, say, how people buy “whole chickens” in Asia. I remember going through different markets in countries from Vietnam to Thailand to Cambodia and actually seeing the legs, claws, necks, and heads still attached. People would freak out here if they saw those things. While I don’t necessarily have any desire to gut or defeather a chicken I am cooking, I would appreciate having things like the feet still in tact or at least included; all those chicken feet could be gathered for some collagen rich chicken stock, which I always like to make after I roast at least two chickens, save all the bones, and have enough vegetable scraps gathered in my freezer. 

I spatchcocked my chicken, removing the back bone and flattening the body, and roasted it for 45 minutes undisturbed. While it roasted, I made an au jus with the chicken neck I cut up, along with some mirepoix, water, and my remaining dry sherry I use for cooking. I reduced it and strained it. And we had the chicken. I forgot after all this time how satisfying it was to roast a whole bird (“whole” in the American sense). I realized how much I missed doing this more semi-regularly and accumulating all my roasted bones for stock. Most of the stock I’ve made this year have been vegetable or bean based, plus a couple dashi batches I made from seaweed and bonito I got from a Japanese market. I made a mental note to make chicken stock more regularly next year.