Capon

Week: 3
Ingredient: Capon
From: Martin’s, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Roast Capon (improvised)

Since I already described my failure to roast a capon, there is not much adventure left to relate. My actual capon roasting experience turned out to be just like roasting a hen, only bigger. So, here are my observations about roasting poultry in general …

1. I like my new roasting pan. It is heavy-duty and spacious enough for a big turkey. I especially like the sturdy handles; they make it easy to move the heavy pan + bird from the counter to oven and back. I can also use it on the stove—perfect for getting all the flavorful brown bits left in the pan into my gravy.
2. Rack ’em up. A roasting rack keeps the bird off the bottom of the pan and out of the juices. No more soggy bottom!
3. Rubbing a chicken with butter is weird. I know butter makes everything better, but how is rubbing a raw chicken with butter a good idea? Seriously! It never works right for me. I end up with as much butter on my hands as on the chicken, and the butter is spread over the chicken in randomly-placed lumps rather than an even coat. There are so many things that can go wrong: butter too cold, chicken too cold, hands too warm, chicken too wet, cook too impatient …. I do not want to stop buttering my chickens, but there must be a better way. Maybe brushing melted butter on the chicken is the way to go. Another option would be to make a lovely compound butter, chill it well, slice it thinly, and tuck it under the skin. I think I will try that next time.
4. Turkey basters are not just strange kitchen tools with no purpose. I do not have a baster. I tried to baste the capon by tilting the pan to pool the juices and spooning the juices over the meat. The rack got in the way, and it was hard to get much juice on the spoon. I also burnt my hand because I was using a short-handled spoon. Clearly a baster was designed to solve this problem. I am pretty sure I could still live without one, but now I am actually thinking about getting one. Crazy!
5. Meat thermometers are smarter than me. At least when it comes to knowing when poultry is done. When I roasted the capon, the meat was a beautiful brown color at least 30 minutes before the “thickest part of the thigh” reached the right temperature. So, appearance is not a good indicator for doneness. Maybe I am crazy, but I think finding the “thickest part of the thigh” is a bit tricky; it is hard to tell exactly where the end of the thermometer is. I have tried a few different thermometers, and now I have settled on the instant-read kind. With an instant-read thermometer, I can quickly check two different places in the thigh and hope that one of them is the thickest part. The only drawback I see with instant-read thermometers is that you have to guess at some of the timing. If your chicken needs to be 3 degrees warmer, how many minutes will that take? I ended up taking my capon out of the oven to check the temperature quite a few times near the end of cooking.
6. Turkey lifters are helpful. There have been many times when I tried to move a roasted chicken from the pan to a platter without lifters, and it has always been precarious. I inevitably end up burning myself, making a mess, and/or marring the chicken’s appearance in some way. Lifters make moving hot poultry stress-free.
7. I always have leftover chicken at the wrong time. You know how lots of recipes call for cooked, chopped or shredded chicken? Well, whenever I want to make one of those recipes, I never have cooked chicken on hand. Whenever I have cooked chicken on hand, I cannot find any of those recipes. Murphy’s Law, I guess.

Conclusion: The first thing that struck me when I took the capon out of its packaging was how much fat there was. All that fat led to great results! With no special treatment, the capon turned out beautifully. The skin was brown and crispy, and the meat was flavorful, tender, and moist. I highly recommend roast capon for the mouth-watering aroma that fills your kitchen while you are cooking, the succulent meal it provides, and the leftover bones which can be used to make delicious, homemade stock. I do not know how readily available capons are most of the time, but I would definitely opt for one over a roasting hen if I had the choice.