Last night was my experiment. I fully preheated the oven to 500 deg. I prepared my chicken - rinse, dry, salt, pepper, into a #7 Griswold pan - and let it sit at room temp for a good half hour while the oven preheated. Put it in the oven on the second lowest rack. That's all there is to it, right? When the breast was a beautiful golden brown I checked the temp. The breast was already at 180. I poked at the thighs a bit and found areas as cool as 140. Clearly it needed more time in the oven despite the breast already being overcooked. After another fifteen minutes or so (I wasn't paying attention to the clock during any of this) the thighs were just barely approaching 165 so I pulled it out of the oven. Immediately after setting it on my counter I noticed that while the top of the drumsticks were nice and brown like the breast, the majority was a flabby pale beige. Same for the entire thighs and most of the wings. While carving the chicken I took a bite of the breast. Predictably it was dry, but my wife seemed to enjoy it nonetheless. I chose to eat the dark meat and sadly peeled off the skin. It was flavorful and extremely juicy if somewhat undercooked for my taste. In hindsight I know I made one mistake. I put the chicken in head first, whereas the instructions make a point of saying legs should face the back. Given this, I will give the method another shot even though being in the back didn't help the wings out any. On a positive note, I'm convinced of the small-pan tip. The oven didn't smoke at all, and the splatters on the wall were minimal. Who'da thunk, "place in pan and throw in oven" could yield such varied results.

I had a German shepherd/boxer mix dog as a kid. She could and did eat anything. My first from-scratch cake was a devils food with a thick, rich chocolate frosting. We put it on the coffee table with plates etc., as we'd invited friends to come for cake and coffee. I was so proud of that cake. It never occurred to us that LuLu would bother it, she was very good about not taking food etc unless we gave it to her. I walked out into the living room just in time to see her oh-so-casually saunter by the coffee table...and nibble off the cake with the side of her mouth as she passed. She must have been making passes for a while, because she'd managed to eat about 1/4 of the cake. She used to pick all the low hanging pears from our tree, she'd circle the tree staring up until she found the ripest one before jumping up to grab it. She ate a lot of pears, they never seemed to bother her. The only thing she ever ate that I recall making her sick was the time she got into the coffee can full of bacon fat we kept under the stove. It was a 10 pound can, and it was getting pretty full, I noticed as I was draining that morning's pan. When I came home from school, there were these odd little pools of some light brownish-grey stuff everywhere and the house reeked of bacon. LuLu was nowhere to be found (she often hid when she knew she'd done something wrong). In the kitchen, the cabinet under the stove was open, and the coffee can only had a few inches of fat left in it. LuLu was eventually found, huddling in the corner of the yard looking pretty miserable...still retching once in a while. To the day she died, some 15 years later, she wouldn't touch a piece of bacon. If you offered her one, she'd back away from you, whites of her eyes showing!

Thanks, Plllog and Lindac. I apologize for that overly long unfocused post. I was cooking (or had plans to cook) the duck and parts is several directions. I removed the duck breast with skin and fat on. These were the last thingsI prepared. I scored the skin and pa fried them in a hot pan, skin side down in a bit of garlic-thyme-sale gris favored duck fat. I let the skin get very crisp, the turned the breast halves. I made a sweet-tart cherry sauce for the and put some of the filtered thyme-salt-garlic fat on roasted potato. They were heavenly. I cooked them medium-med rare. The chopped carcass including wings, thighs and legs I oven roasted after marinating dry in garlic, gray salt and thyme for 48 hours. I washed marinade off, patted dry and put in a slow oven in a Le Creuset Dutch oven, no cover because I wanted the skin to crisp. Hours later, fragrant, but skin did not crisp. Meat seemed salty and tough. I did get about 1.5 Cups of delicious fat which I filtered and set aside. I made stock from the bones. I couldn’t get the skin to crisp. The stock is heavenly. Oh, and the filtered duck broth gelatin (solid when cold) was fantastic. I ate a few spoonfuls, and included the remainder in the broth-stock pot. It was my first duck cooking experiment and I read too much, was exhausted and tried to go in too many directions at once, and took too much time. The many good cooks here would have tossed me and the duck out of their kitchens, I’m sure. This weekend I’ll visit my duck loving friend and maybe get more thoughts. I’ll take the frozen liver and some fat with me. I bought a few “spare” ducks (freezer), so one of these days I will try the recommended Inna Gartner recipe, and also a Peking Duck recipe — air compressor or sports ball pump technique to separate the skin from the fat. I wish I could give you a taste of those duck breasts with crisp skin — so delicious. Oh, and the flavor of the duck fat reminded me so much of the batches of roasted prime woodland mushrooms I used to make — chanterelles, optimum boletes, and select russulas. Now I’m off to snack on leftover duck and to make Char Siu. Have a good weekend, everyone. edit - typos Note: I cannot get this to publish to the CF; I am trying again. ??? Anyone see this?

Artemis_Ma, that sounds like the stuffing I make now that was my Mom's recipe. Here's my recipe: My Stuffing (or Dressing depending on your frame of mind) Growing up, our family always used to stuff the turkey. Thus, it was stuffing. However with all the concern about bacteria and under cooking, I started cooking it in a casserole dish. Thus, it is no longer stuffing, but dressing. Ingredients 16 cups of assorted mild flavored stale bread 1 onion, chopped fine 3 stalks of celery, chopped fine 1-16 oz tube of sausage (I like Jimmy Dean regular or sage) 2-4 cups chicken broth 6 oz sliced fresh button mushrooms 6 tablespoons butter Poultry seasoning (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper) Whenever I have ends of loaves of bread, or we don’t finish a loaf of bread, I’ll put them in a freezer bag and throw them in the freezer until I’m ready to make stuffing. You want to use mild breads (any white bread, hamburger or hot dog rolls, whole wheat, multi grain, sour dough, Italian, French, etc, work well. Breads that have a strong flavor like rye bread, pumpernickel, garlic bread, etc, will overwhelm the flavor of the stuffing. Don’t use these.) Toast bread in the toaster until golden brown. Tear bread into bite size pieces and put into a large bowl. In a large skillet, cook the sausage until no longer pink. Do not drain. Put sausage (grease and all) into bread bowl and crumb sausage. In the same skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Sauté onion until translucent. Add to bread and sausage (do not drain). In the same skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Sauté slice mushrooms until tender (until they start to sweat). Add to bread and sausage (do not drain). In the same skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Sauté celery until tender. Add to bread and sausage (do not drain). Heat the chicken broth (start with 2 cups) until boiling and pour over the bread and sausage mixture. Add two heaping tablespoons of poultry seasoning. Mix everything with your hands. The mixture should be moist but not soggy. If the mixture is still dry add a little more chicken broth. If stuffing the bird, stuff the bird and cook according to roasting directions for the bird. If making dressing, place the stuffing in a greased casserole dish (or two. I use two smaller casserole dishes. A 13x9 baking dish can usually accommodate it.) Bake covered at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.