Brining a Chicken

I've always enjoyed chicken salad served on a split tomato. I added salt, pepper, parsley, basil, green onion, paprika, ground red pepper and a hint of EVOO on the tomato.

This is the brined chicken right after I pulled it out of the oven and pulled the legs off to eat hot!

There's no other smell like the smell of a roasting chicken in the oven. But it's hot outside, and the last thing I need is an oven set at 425 for over an hour when constant basting is required to provide a moist bird. So to keep the oven closed while it cooked, I decided to give brining a try. Never done it before... So I was very excited!

I quickly researched brining online. Some people advised brining a whole chicken for just 2 hours, some insisted overnight, while others said overnight is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

I choose to brine mine overnight. Here's the recipe I found on allrecipes.com:
1 gallon warm water
3/4 cup kosher salt
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
(I also added about 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce)

I cooked a small bird so I used less of all the ingredients listed above. But I didn't measure anything out, I just kinda winged it... which worked out fine.

I roasted the chicken in the oven for an hour and a half on 425 stuffed with an onion, lemon, fresh rosemary and thyme. (Thank you Katie for the herbs!!!)

Kudzu, the pup, and I shared the legs while they were hot. Yummy!

I allowed the chicken to cool, deboned, and made chicken salad.

For the chicken salad:
3 ribs of celery, processed in the food processor
1 apple, processed
1 tbs grated onion
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1 cup veganaise or mayo
and parsley

Combine all ingredients and fold until mixed well.

I like to make my chicken salad basic. When I prepare each serving I can add anything extra I would like. This way I can dress up my chicken salad differently for each serving, if I'd like.