Chicken Purchasing and Prep

Whole chickens come in various sizes. Broilers and fryers are younger chickens that weigh 2½ to 4½ pounds. A roaster (or oven-stuffer roaster) is an older chicken and usually weighs between 5 and 7 pounds.

No. You should avoid rinsing raw meat and poultry. Contrary to what some cookbooks (or your grandmother) advise, rinsing is more likely to spread contaminants around the sink (and perhaps onto nearby foods such as lettuce sitting on the counter) than to send them down the drain. And our kitchen tests failed to demonstrate any flavor benefit to rinsing meat or poultry before cooking.

We prefer to use kosher salt for salting because it’s easier to distribute the salt evenly.

We prefer to use table salt for brining since it dissolves quickly in the water.

Salting keeps the surface of foods dry because the salt is applied directly to the meat. This means that foods brown and crisp better because there is no added moisture to interfere with browning. Salting generally requires more time than brining, but brining takes up more room in the refrigerator. Whether salted or brined, foods should be refrigerated throughout the process.

Which method you choose depends on how you plan to cook the protein, how much room you have in the refrigerator, and how much time you have for the process.