September 14, 2002

Chicken Roast Recipe

Forget Kentucky Fried Chicken. Forget rotisserie chicken. Forget mom's country fried chicken. The best way to fix chicken is by using the traditional Palestinian method -- earth oven! I was invited by Abu Iyad to participate in the chicken roast today. It's a bit of a lengthy process, but the results are well worth the effort. Give it a try.

(1) Build an earth oven out of old rocks, clay, and straw. Make it large enough for eight chickens. (Abu Iyad completed this step a couple of years ago.)

(2) Build a pretty good fire in it.

Abu Iyad is careful to avoid the flames.

(3) Rest and let the fire burn down to scorching hot coals. No flames should be present.

Hydrate. It's hot as heck around that oven.

(4) Select bird and perform necessary preparation procedures -- or get some chicken at the market.

These look good enough to eat, but we opted for the market chicken.

(5) Mix clay, straw and water to make mud. The mud will be used to seal the oven exhaust and door.

Half a bucket of mud should be enough.

(6) Load the oven with spiced chicken, potatoes, onions, eggplant, tomatoes, etc.

Toss food onto the grill rack in the oven. This is about as close as you can get. It's hot as heck around that oven.

(7) Place a large flat stone over oven door. Place plate over oven exhaust. Seal edges with mud.

Pat mud over areas where smoke escapes.

(8) Wait. Sit under an olive tree and wait one hour. Learn to count to ten in Arabic. Talk about the prophets. Realize that you forgot to put potatoes inside.

Hang out with the guys. Notice that more boys show up the closer you get to finishing the job.

(9) Break the seal and drop the door. The mud will have hardened, so it will take a bit of muscle.

Drop the door and stand back. It's hot as heck around that oven.

(10) Grab food! It should smell fantastic.

Use a skewer or something to get your food, because the oven is very hot.

(11) Enjoy! Stuff yourself and forget about meals for two days.

Iyad didn't have any complaints.