Smoky tea-brined chicken
Chicken second courses
Let’s talk about taking risks for a second.
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<br />After university, my parents sent me on a trip to Australia, by myself, as a graduation present. I travelled for 24 hours to Brisbane from Toronto, not speaking to anyone and with no plans as to where I was going to stay or go beyond my first 24 hours in the country.
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<br />On my first day in Brisbane, I called my parents for the first time since I had arrived.
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<br />“You can come home now,” said my dad, meaning every word of it. “you don’t have to prove anything. If you don’t want to be there, just get on a plane and come home. We won’t be mad at all.”
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<br />Of course I wasn’t going to go home 6 hours after I had arrived. But what my dad meant was, it’s okay to make mistakes. If I decided to cut bait and return home after flying for 24 hours and spending $3500 on a plane ticket, my parents wouldn’t be upset at me. This is how I was raised, and my dad said it often enough to me: there are no mistakes in life, because you learn from every ‘mistake’ you make. Give yourself permission to fail. It’s okay.
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<br />It’s with this attitude that I approach most things in life, including cooking. If I don’t take risks, or if I’m afraid to make a mistake, I will never develop any great recipes. And I’m not down with using other peoples’ ideas, at least not all the time. So, it was with this spirit that I developed this tea-brined chicken recipe.
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<br />If you’ve ever had a brined chicken, you’ll know that brining yields a crazy delicious, succulent bird. It takes a while, but if you’ve got 24 hours, I would highly recommend it.
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<br />Tea is a hot item right now, with good reason. It has tons of antioxidants called polyphenols, which among other things, may help lower cholesterol[1]. It also tastes darn good!
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<br />I am not sure how I came up with the idea of brining chicken in tea, but all I know is that it came to me and I wanted to see if I could make it work. I used lapsang souchong tea for this recipe, which is a tea that’s dried over pine embers. This processing makes it smell and taste smoky, like a pine and oak wood fire. You’ve never smelled or tasted a tea like this one.
<br />I headed over to The Tea Emporium on Eglinton Ave. in Toronto to get the tea, since I knew they’d have it. They were more than happy to help me out, and soon I was holding a big bag of smoky tea leaves.
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<br />I threw what I thought would go well with the tea into the brine, and soon I had my first chicken ready to go. I was a bit nervous, but the results were amazing; while the chicken was cooking, the entire house smelled like smoked turkey or ham. When I took it out of the oven, the chicken had a dark-brown lacquered, crispy skin that was absolutely show-stopping. It looked like Peking duck skin but without the layer of fat underneath. And the taste was out of this world.
<br />Now, don’t expect the chicken to taste like ‘tea’ – this isn’t your garden-variety black tea you’re brining it in. The meat will be smoky-tasting, as well as incredibly juicy and aromatic.
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<br />The risk paid off, as it usually does.
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