battle of the whole roast chickens

I'm on a bit of a soup making bender, which means I need stock, which means I'm roasting a lot of chickens.

I've been pitting recipies against each other gladiator style in the arena of my kitchen, and it saddens me to report the gore-streaked winner, striking a heroic pose atop a mighty pile of the fallen, is food TV poofter Jamie Oliver.

I wanted not to like it, but his take not only produces the best tasting chicken with the crispest, most appealing skin....it's also the easiest to make. A powerful one-two punch that laid out my bias against mass media personages leveraging their celebrity to sell books.

My testing hasn't been exhaustive, but Oliver bested the recipes of my bookshelf favorites and the one cited by many as the p4p champ, Marcella Hazan from her book Classic Italian Cooking. It delivered a tasty bird, but turning and basting the chicken every 15 minutes was a pain and the skin simply didn't measure up.

Oliver's technique gives you great crisp skin with no basting and only two turnings- you basically pan-sear the top of the bird in an oiled, preheated roasting pan, then cook it for an hour as usual. I've made it a several times and it's always come out splendid.

So, grudging but well deserved praise for Mr. Oliver's methodology.
I'll have to shelve my bias and try out some of his other ideas.