Well, I'll Never Do *That* Again!

Tried an experiment the other day while cooking a whole chicken. Historically I stand the chicken up by jamming a soup can filled with water into its butt, so that it gets brown all around, the fat drips off, and the water steams the chicken and keeps it moinst. It does all of these things just theway I want to, but the hole/soup can don't match and it ends up being a relly tight fit. Combine this with a little bit of shrinkage from cooking, and it being too hot and tender to slip off easily after its done -- well, it was more often than not just a pain inthe ass (and not just the chickens.)

I'd stumbled across an article that suggested using a bundt pan to achieve the same effect. The chicken stanmds on the metal part, the fat drips off and is collected in the bottom, and the middle spindle is narrow enough that the bird goes on and comes of pretty easily. So I gave it a try.

Yeah, that didn't work so well IMHO. The high sides of the cake pan block a lot of the heat from actually hitting the chicken, and I had to bake it for twice as long. Yes, the grease does collect in the bottom of the pan, but it collects in all those pretty grooves and is really pretty gross to have to clean up.

But really, this is the reason I'll never use the bundt pan for cooking chicken again:

That's just obscene. The chicken sank down onto the wide bottom of the center spindle, spreading its tender and juicy bottom wide like the mouth of an eager bass or a $20 whore. Chicken should NEVER...err...gape....like that. So so very wrong. I found myself sudden;y and oddly pleased that I couldn't actually eat said chicken with my jaw and all. (shudder)