I don’t normally get that amount of smoke with any other method but the Zuni. The Keller method doesn’t put off much smoke at all. I suspect the Zuni method dried the skin out so much it started to smoke in the oven, but I still don’t really know what happened there. It’s why I want to try it again some time, to figure out where I went wrong.

And the sheer length of the bread salad recipe put me off, but maybe when I have some time on my hands I’ll give it a go. Thanks for the inspiration!

…and herbs inside…or a bit of bacon, or…aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Anyway, just a couple of comments.

Chicken size: We buy our chickens from Pat. We buy what he has available. We love his chickens. He’s our guy. We tend to bring home 3.5-4 pounders pretty consistently, which I don’t think is overly-large for the Zuni method. I don’t think either of us are willing to change where we source from.

Cooking vessel: We use our well-seasoned cast iron skillet for everything we can in our kitchen. Roast chicken is no exception. It’s the best tool for the job, and if we’re so inclined to make a pan sauce, we can, easily.

Smoke: We have hard-wired smoke detectors which, if plugged in, go off from steam if we indulge in a too-long shower. We pulled them down in anticipation of a little action, but what we ended up with was really unpleasant – for us and the cats. We’ll try the Zuni method again when we can more comfortably open things up for ventilation, but frankly, we have a little low-powered, un-vented to the outside exhaust fan, and it really doesn’t do the job for people who like to cook the way we do. But hey, we love where we live. So, you know, we’ll adapt.

And finally,

Zuni bread salad: OMFG. Dudes. Seriously. I am practically drooling just thinking about it.