These days if you have a question for a living chef, you can just post it to Twitter and next thing you know you’ve got your answer. So after a Splayed Roast Chicken technique that I learned from Melissa Clark’s most excellent videos in The New York Times resulted in phenomenal chicken perfectly cooked, but also a pretty smoky kitchen, I wanted to know whether she had encountered the same problem. This is the conversation, which results in me being told that I should probably clean my oven (which will probably result in me never using it again and just borrowing my parents’ much better one, as per my usual MO):
Natalia de Cuba @NataliadeCuba
@goodappetite Loved Splayed Roast Chicken. Shared/linked on blog but what about smoky kitchen? see http://wp.me/p18ra3-1qo via @NataliadeCuba
melissa clark @goodappetite Mar 3
@NataliadeCuba depends on how clean your oven is. Usually the high heat will actually help clean the oven, so it will smoke less next time
So, ask and ye shall receive…Thanks Melissa!
And here is the original post from the other day.
Splayed Roast Chicken
Moist and tender all around
Hot, Cheap & Easy 
Maybe I’m a little suspect but I’ve had items smoke like crazy in a totally clean oven when the heat is that hight. Heating a cast iron skillet for 45 min. at 500 degrees and then cooking a chicken in it at that high of a heat for as long as it takes to be done will smoke in my humble opinion. That being said, I’m not a well known cook. 🙂
Heehee! Ye of little faith! I don’t really know what happened, but I will try it in another oven next time. The important thing is…there will be a next time!
I can’t wait to be proven wrong although even with the smoke it was the best ever. 🙂