The meat of a roast chicken is all well and good, but it’s the skin that I really adore. Getting it as crisp and burnished as possible is my goal for every bird; if I can hear it crackle like a potato chip, I know I’ve gotten close.
Strategies for achieving this abound. You can leave the bird uncovered in the fridge overnight, or blast it with a hair dryer. You can rub it down with salt or baking powder or both. Some cooks recommend separating the skin from the flesh, poking holes as you go to release the fat. All of these methods work, to varying degrees.
But the fastest, simplest and perhaps most delicious way to get chicken skin as crunchy as a strip of fried bacon is to turn it into a giant frico – that is, to coat the bird with enough grated Parmesan so that, as it roasts, the skin turns into one big, salty, schmaltz-infused cheese wafer.
It’s an idea that follows in the footsteps of my recipe for Parmesan fried eggs and J. Kenji López-Alt’s for frico roast potatoes. In theory, it made perfect sense.
However, it did take a few tries to get it right. Its ultimate success depends on when you apply the cheese. Add it too early, and it burns a little, imbuing the meat with a scorched flavor. Sprinkle it on too late, and the skin gets more leathery than crisp. I found that adding the cheese halfway through roasting was perfect, with the Parmesan melting and bubbling into a crackerlike coating that wraps the bird in a crisp, umami embrace. There’s nothing quite like it.