I cook a lot of chicken. I was a vegetarian for twenty plus years, but a few years ago something changed and I had a hard time digesting a lot of my protein staples. I started eating chicken again and immediately felt better. Bodies are weird. For all the cookbooks I have, I don’t really have any that are chicken focused. I still gravitate towards vegetarian cookbooks. I requested Winner, Winner! Chicken Dinner from NetGalley because my chicken repertoire is haphazard. I received this in exchange for an honest review.
I went back and forth on this book. Only a couple of recipes really jumped out at me, but as I read more closely I realized that it lays a solid foundation for cooking chicken. Billis gets into the basics of butchering, dry brines, marinades and sauces. After some of the recipes she goes into how you can use those techniques or adapt the recipe to make the chicken dish you want to make. It’s a thoughtful cookbook that gives a foundation and then encourages the cook to adventure out on their own.
It did bother me that in her Puerto Rican Arroz con Pollo recipe, she doesn’t mention sofrito. It seemed a bit lazy after all the information and discussion of ingredients she provides other places. My other complaint was that I found the time on the recipe for Oliver’s Chicken to be about 15 minutes short. I did dry brine the chicken (salt, rosemary, lemon zest and pepper) and it was as tasty as promised. But it took half again as long to cook.
The photos are great, and I think this would be a good cookbook for a newer cook. It’s worthwhile for the techniques and the basics.
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