Food52 Dynamite Chicken

60 Never-Boring Recipes for Your Favorite Bird [A Cookbook]

About the Book

A game-changing collection of 60 new-fashioned chicken recipes from chef Tyler Kord and Food52, the award-winning online kitchen and home destination.

Sautéed, fried, or nestled in a sheet pan, chicken is a clear winner for home cooks around the world--from jerk chicken and chicken adobo to Vietnamese chicken noodle soup, pho ga. But because chicken is so popular, you may feel like you've run out of new ways to love it. That's where Food52 and Tyler Kord come in, bringing you a clever collection of deliciously inventive chicken dishes. In this book, you'll find creative recipes for every occasion: Winning weeknight dinners and ambitious-but-worth-it weekend projects; meals to impress guests and satisfy picky kids; and cozy comfort foods to curl up with.

Tyler's new classics will soon join your regular recipe lineup, with dishes like Roast Chicken with All of the Vegetables in Your CSA, Broiled Chicken Thighs with Plum Tomatoes & Garlic, Patrick's Fried Chicken with Spicy Pickles, and Tangy Rose's Lime-Glazed Wings. He throws in a few surprises, too, like Chicken & Kimchi Pierogies and Spicy Parmesan Chicken Potpie, along with an ingenious combination of chicken and lasagna (called Chickensagna, naturally). And thanks to handy how-tos on carving, trussing, spatchcocking, making stock from scratch, and much more, you'll learn every chicken trick in the--well--book. So even if chicken's already your trusty dinner go-to, Dynamite Chicken will have you eating lots more of it, and never getting bored.
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Praise for Food52 Dynamite Chicken

“Makes the original white meat exciting again“Chowhound “Best New Cookbooks“
 
“Kord’s creations are versatile and inventive. . . . These recipes will inspire home cooks to jazz up the popular bird for weeknight dinners or weekend entertaining.”Publishers Weekly

“[Kord] is just the guy to bust us all out of our dreaded chicken cutlet rut.”—Cup of Jo
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Excerpt

Food52 Dynamite Chicken

Introduction

I am enamored of chicken. To me, it’s the most delicious meat of all of the meats. Sure, steak’s great, and who doesn’t love bacon? (Except people who don’t like bacon for extremely valid reasons separate from its deliciousness.) But chicken’s affordability, versatility, and ease make it a clear favorite, and not just for me. Some of the world’s most popular recipes involve chicken, from jerk chicken to chicken adobo to pho ga (Vietnamese chicken noodle soup). Heck, in my home state of New York, many of our favorite meals start with chicken. One dish, Buffalo wings, became one of the most famous foods on planet Earth! And there’s Cornell Chicken, a barbecue dish beloved by my hometown—but we’ll get to that in a minute.

So who am I? I’m a chef with a restaurant in Brooklyn called No. 7, and I’m often called “that broccoli guy” or “that sandwich guy” or “that broccoli sandwich guy.” But we also proudly serve Cornell Chicken, fried chicken, and tons of chicken sandwiches. I’m also starting to admit I’m a writer: I wrote a book about sandwiches, one about broccoli, and sometimes I write articles that get nominated for James Beard Awards (okay, that happened once and I didn’t win, and if you’re bored, you can just skip to the recipes!).

What I’m not is someone who thinks there are “good” and “bad” ingredients. Chicken often gets drawn into this debate—are chicken legs or whole chickens better than boneless, skinless breasts? To me, the answer is no, so here you’ll find recipes that excitedly embrace chicken in all its forms: whole-roasted birds, grilled wings, braised thighs, and—yes—boneless, skinless chicken breasts. In my view, this versatile cut is chicken’s MVP, so we’ll treat it with the finesse it deserves (like marinated in tahini-orange dressing, or nestled in buttery apple jam on toast).

Much as I love chicken, I recognize it can be a complicated ingredient. In the United States, these complications begin with Robert Baker, who taught at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences from 1957 to 1989. Baker was tasked with helping popularize chicken when a postwar nation needed to efficiently feed a whole lot more people. He invented chicken nuggets and poultry ham and bacon, as well as Cornell Chicken, and the country rejoiced! And while that’s helped many families, who can now serve protein for a couple of dollars a pound, it’s come with significant ethical dilemmas related to factory farming.

When I buy chicken, I prefer to get it directly from small farmers, so I’m supporting people who ethically and sustainably raise it. I avoid factoryfarmed chicken because to me, factories aren’t doing a good enough job of protecting our environment and ensuring there are no sketchy things in their meat. I usually shop at a butcher who sells chickens from small farms; since the meat costs more, I’m choosier about when I eat it, and try to use as much of the bird as I can. But this strategy may be tough and not realistic for everyone. At my local grocery, I’ve seen several options for meat raised without hormones or antibiotics, an alternative to consider. Though it’s still factory-farmed, it can be more humane for the chickens (improved housing standards, in some cases) and better for us to eat (less sketchy stuff ). 

On the subject of responsibility, I want to point out something I think falls within my responsibility to you. While I perpetually look to ingredients and techniques from other places, I did my damnedest not to write easy, weeknight versions of complex chicken dishes from cultures that are not my own. I don’t want to speak as a representative of a culture over which I don’t have authority—I’d much rather leave that to the people who do have it, for whom a particular dish is an important signifier of their heritage. So you won’t find Chicken Pad Thai or Chicken Tikka Masala here, but you will find Chicken & Kimchi Pierogies (page 71), and I think you’ll really like them!

Complications aside, I still think you should eat chicken, the most delicious meat of all the meats. But while we’re eating chicken, let’s be thoughtful about it. I buy whole birds over individually wrapped pieces, to use less plastic and because I like all chicken parts. But if you aren’t into that, buy prepackaged pieces; at the end of the day, I’d rather you do that than throw away parts you won’t use. I get that it’s a convenient way to buy chicken for individual meals, and there are plenty of recipes here where it makes sense to use cuts like this.

But if you can buy a whole chicken from a small farm, awesome—that one chicken can become three amazing meals. Use the breasts for spiced schnitzel on Tuesday (see page 16), poach the legs in a lemongrass broth on Thursday (see page 40), and make stock with the carcass on Friday (see page 9). Then use the stock for grits, to make tamales with those grits and leftover chicken on Saturday (see page 65). And I guess just eat broccoli all the other nights, like I do.

Food52 Works Series

Food52 Simply Genius
Food52 Big Little Recipes
Food52 Your Do-Anything Kitchen
Food52 Dynamite Chicken
Food52 Cook in the Blank
Food52 Genius Desserts
Food52 Any Night Grilling
Food52 Ice Cream and Friends
Food52 Mighty Salads
Food52 A New Way to Dinner
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About the Author

Tyler Kord
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About the Author

Amanda Hesser
Amanda Hesser, co-founder and CEO of Food52, is the author of the award-winning The Essential New York Times Cookbook, Cooking for Mr. Latte, and The Cook and the Gardener, as well as the editor of the essay collection Eat, Memory. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tad Friend, and their two children. More by Amanda Hesser
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About the Author

Merrill Stubbs
Amanda Hesser, co-founder and CEO of Food52, is the author of the award-winning The Essential New York Times Cookbook, Cooking for Mr. Latte, and The Cook and the Gardener, as well as the editor of the essay collection Eat, Memory. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tad Friend, and their two children. More by Merrill Stubbs
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