Black Lemon Chicken - Salty, Sour, Bitter, Sweet

This very simple, roasted chicken video recipe is an example of how appearances can be very misleading in the kitchen. The sauce is built from the caramelized lemon and chicken juices stuck to the bottom of the roasting pan, which take the form of an unappetizing black tar. If you didn't know any better, your instincts would tell you to discard the darkest bits before making the "jus."

That would be a big mistake. While it looks like it would taste like a charcoal briquette, it actually tastes like….taste. To borrow the catch phrase from a currently running soup commercial, "I like the taste of taste." As many of you already know, there are four primary tastes, salty, sour, bitter, and sweet.

If you take a small bit of the black tar from the bottom of the roasting pan, and pop it in your mouth, instead the one-dimensional burnt flavor you may expect, you should get an intense, very intense, combination of all four tastes.

I'm not sure why this is, but when we dissolve this super four-taste-tar with some additional stock, it makes a great dressing/sauce with which to finish the dish. As you'll see, I used romaine, but this same recipe works great with watercress, arugula, or spinach. Also, don't be afraid of a little bit of chicken fat. Think of this sauce as a warm dressing - in fact, this probably has less fat than if you just ate the dry chicken on a fully dressed salad. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1 big whole chicken
• 3/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pinch of cayenne
• pinch of cumin
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken broth or stock
• sliced romaine, or other greens like arugula, spinach, watercress
• salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste