PS, I've never bothered with the mushroom sauce.

I can't tell you best technique, but this is always successful for me. I usually do a whole butterflied chicken, but it works with parts.

1. Suntan lotion. For crisp skin you need to render out the fat that's underneath, which happens with heat, but it helps a lot if you use a bit of oil and a bit of sugar on the outside. By that, I mean some salad dressing, marinating sauce or similar. It doesn't matter what flavor, just that it has some fat and some sugar. Too much sugar, like with most barbecue sauce, and you'll get blackened. It may still taste good, but it it'll char.

2. Flavor--I usually sprinkle some herbs and spices on as well.

3. Air: Without air exposure, the skin will stay moist and soft. I use a shallow pan, like a sheet pan or hotel pan. You use a roasting pan if you have a rack that sits at the top level of the sides. With a whole butterflied chicken, most of the skin is faced up, and not enough of the legs are skin down to matter. If you're doing a bunch of legs and thighs, and want the skin crisp on the bottoms of the legs, you need a rack.

I usually go old fashioned, and slice an onion arranged around the bottom of the pan with some cut carrots or snack carrots, and whatever I want to use up, and use that as my rack, but I'm not worried about the bottom of the legs. I'd still suggest the veg for keeping the chicken moist and tasty, but put a rack above them to hold the chicken to get the bottoms crisper.

4. Steam. The great secret. If you don't have a steam oven, put some liquid in the bottom of the pan. Water, stock, wine, beer, whatever you like. More if you don't have the onion. At least a cup. I've done it this way and it works just fine,

5. Oven--at home I usually use the combi-steam oven on 360° F and 60% steam (convection heat only). Otherwise, I put the liquid in the bottom of the pan, and aim for a similar temperature, with convection. If you don't have any stops between 350° and 375°, 350° is fine. 1.5 hrs. for a whole chicken (about 4.4 lbs.). About half that, 45 min., for 1.5 lbs. of parts.

Convection is even more variable oven to oven than temperature. You'll have to keep an eye on it and test the exact temperature, time and fan setting that works for you.

Good luck!

Interesting that many chefs can't seem to tell the difference between crispy chicken and browned chicken.

This is true crispy skin chicken:

dcarch

I cooked a chicken tonight, and the skin was pretty good. I keep wanting to try the technique in this link. Not necessarily the cooking part, but the prep par,t which I'll quote below. My hesitation is using so much salt, and then having it hang out, uncovered, in my fridge.

2. Salt your bird. In Salt Fat Acid Heat, Samin Nostrat shares one of the simplest tricks to attain a delightfully succulent, crispy-skinned bird. Her trick, in one word: SALT.And when it comes to whole spatchcock chicken, salt early.

Seasoning in advance– I do mine overnight–gives salt plenty of time to diffuse evenly throughout the bird, doing it’s quiet work of flavoring and tenderizing.

3. Air chill spatchcock chicken. Once slated, another element that is equally important here is air. Chill your generously seasoned spatchcock chicken in the fridge uncovered and with the skin side up.

The constantly circulating air dries out the skin. The bird will look, as Samin puts it, “scarily fossilized.” But, the dried-out skin cooks up golden and glassy…the crispiest you’ll ever have!

Why would one ruin a really good chicken with brine? That's for tough old things...

Feathers, salt is drying, and if you want glassy, it'll do that. I can't abide that much salt, but I hope you'll report back if you try it.

Dcarch, I promise you, the skin on my chickens comes out nice and crispy, as in crispy. :)

I have never had any sort of a problem doing "oven fried" chicken....I just put it on a sheet pan, usually on foil to avoid the scrubbing of the pan, lightly salt and put it into a 375 oven.....comes out beautifully browned, crisp skin and moist meat...depending on the size of the chicken anywhere from 25 minutes top 45 to 60.
Sometimes I'll pour on and spread around some Soy-vey marinade....like Very Very terayaki....sometimes a little balsamic vinegar, but that has a tendency to burn....but my favorite is to mix some lime juice and honey and brush it on about 10 minutes from when I think the chicken should be done.

I agree that the dry salt method a day in advance, leaving the chicken uncovered in the fridge overnight is the best way to get crispy skin. There is a huge difference between dry salt and brine, and I've been doing the dry salt method for turkey for many years now, but it also works for chicken. For turkey, the salt needs to be put on about three days in advance and the turkey left uncovered in the fridge the last 24 hours. I never do a wet brine for anything.

"-----Dcarch, I promise you, the skin on my chickens comes out nice and crispy, as in crispy. :) ---"

I believe you and many other cooks in this Cooking Forum. But I was talking about chefs like Heston Blumenthal , who really can't cook a crispy chicken.

I love shattering crispy chicken skin.

dcarch

chicken skin salad

Pretty. The last one looks like a tutu.

Mine isn't cracklin's crispy with blisters, like in your salad. I've never seen that cooked on the chicken, though I've seen the kind of glassy fully rendered and dried like in your video. Mine is crunchy crispy, with a definite snap, and I can do the blistered cracklin's the old fashioned way while the schmaltz is rendering. :)

I'm not familiar with Heston Blumenthal, nor his struggles with chicken skin. Poor guy.

It's about having a quality bird. One that's been running about in a field will have great meat and the skin will crisp naturally. An anaemic poor indoor bird will never be the same.

Last one was better. Thank you. I did not have much time (thanks to too much time looking online and less in the kitchen. Bad me). But I put it in a low sided cast iron fry pan, to make sure it had heat circulating more, and carefully dried off all the skin first. The seasonings still burned but I think I need to just add those near the end.