Brad Makes Fermented Tomato Smoked Chicken

Close the fridge. You live in a barn, Corey?

[Corey] We're in a barn currently.

[beep]

You got me.

Hey guys, today on It's Alive,

we're gonna be doing one of my favorite recipes

from an upcoming project I got coming out November 9th,

Field Notes for Food Adventure.

It's my first book, super excited about it.

It's an adventure book, recipe book, stoked for it.

We're gonna be doing a recipe out of it today,

fermented tomato with smoked chicken.

It's a glaze and a whole ferment process.

Just a great way to celebrate tomatoes

and chickens and smoke.

And you.

[upbeat music]

[beep]

So first off, I got one nice, you know,

just the best chicken you can get, obviously, always,

but just a whole chicken.

Came a little trussed up from the spot I got it at.

You can do this with parts already, you know,

or just all drumsticks or whatever, you know,

whatever you're into.

I like getting a whole chicken and I split it down,

just open it up in half.

So what I like to do is like, when you have that breast,

there's that little divider bone that runs down it.

When I do it with a knife, I like to just cut right by that.

And you kinda just like pick a side and then really,

I just kind of crunch right through.

And really the biggest bone is that backbone

and we can kind of crunch right around it.

And then you're just kind of doing normal chicken butchery,

just like that and you got a nice little half chicken.

And then from there, it's just a salting game.

The biggest part about it is just get it on there.

A couple hours, at least, you know,

but if you can go 24 hours, beautiful.

So all on the inside and then up on the breast,

you can open up that little pocket of skin.

And I like to just kind of work some salt

on the top of the breast there.

All right, so this chicken's all salted

inside out, all over.

Next step, smoking it and getting the fermentation

in the sauce all ready, so of plenty work.

[Man] Do you use a bamboo stick in the recipe?

No, this is just a prop of comfort.

[squeaky noise]

I've been walking around with it.

I'd grow some, but I think it just like takes over, right?

[Man] Yeah, you'd be sorry if you did that.

[hawk screeching]

Watch that hawk, you hear that? [beep]

There he is.

This is a big one, he's cruising for the chickens.

As I'm cooking chicken. This is a sick world. [laughs]

[beep]

So yesterday I went ahead

and I cut up another chicken, salted it.

I got two chickens chopped up, four pieces now,

four halves, salted for 24 hours, ready to go.

I'm going to rub them with a little olive oil.

The salt and the olive oil,

it just sets up a nice base for everything

to just kind of stick to.

It just seems right. Oh, here we go.

So yeah, I'm throwing this in.

This is just a pellet-fed smoker.

Basically, you know, it's a smoker, but it's a,

you could do this on a grill too.

It's just a low and slow, like I said,

if the grill gets down to 225 degrees, settle at that,

same thing, it's going to cook in the same way.

It's just not going to get that real nice kind of smoky ring

and build up in flavor.

It's just about that temperature, holding it at 225.

Let that smoke for an hour.

We'll start building out the glaze and the sauce

and yeah, beautiful day.

[upbeat music]

Now for the tomato part,

which is going to be the glaze and the sauce,

you take just any type of tomato.

You can use cherry tomatoes, which we're going to use.

You can use beef steak, anything.

This is the fermentation aspect,

which you're going to need to do 3, 4, 5, 6 days

ahead of the time that you're going to want

to make the chicken, right?

Because it's going to need a little time to ferment.

And just like any fermentation,

depending on where you live and the temperature

and the biome life that's already

living on your ingredients, you know,

everywhere is a little different.

So right off the bat, we're gonna have a big old bowl here

that I'm gonna mix this stuff in

and we're going to ferment them in jars.

So I got about two pounds of cherry tomatoes

and grape tomatoes, like I said, you can use a variety,

multicolor, all red, whatever you can get your mitts on.

And you know, you could do this in a crock.

You could do this in a fermentation, like a vacuum bag,

but you know, they always work really well too.

You don't have to have...

You don't have to halve them, but I like to,

it helps to kind of kickstart the party,

get the juices moving.

It kind of just moves it along, so I'm going to halve them.

Look at that old timeless classic of a trick.

[inspiring music]

I just showed my mom this the other day, actually,

and she was like, or maybe it was my dad.

He was like, Whoa, oh, whoa.

That's a good trick, I like that.

I was like, Yeah.

It must've been my dad. He was blown away.

[inspiring music]

And then for this fermentation, you know,

you want about one and a half percent salt by weight.

I kind of, I got this really nice little, I got this set.

The great Sandor Katz told me, you know, just do it by,

if it tastes perfectly seasoned, then it's, you're good,

because you're going to eat it

at the end of the day anyway, right?

And like that made a lot of sense.

Sandor Katz, the fermentation legend.

We're going to be hopefully getting him on the show soon.

But yeah, I forget why I brought him up.

Yeah, that tastes great.

And then I got two little cloves of garlic.

Crushed, chopped, get that good stuff going.

[glass breaking]

Yeah, so I chop that up

and then right from the right from the garden, all right?

'Cause it's just wonderful and anyone, if you can,

should grow lemongrass because oh,

oh my God, it's just delightful.

And then I got a little habanero.

Hot, so be careful how you touch it, okay?

Add that all right in there, okay,

'cause this is for the grownups today.

[baby crying]

And then I also have, just cause it's nice and they're here,

a little bit of flowering thyme.

Yeah, growing herbs is great.

And then I have some really nice mint,

just 'cause again, why not?

So we have all that.

And then today I'm going to use a little bit

of this really great Turkish pepper flake

called maras biber.

It's just super oily, mildly spicy

and just absolutely delicious on almost everything.

It's probably my favorite pepper flake.

So we'll mix that all together

and I'm going to pack it into a jar here

and we're going to let that ferment.

I'm going to put a lid on it.

I made a swap for this, you know,

about five days ago and things were going on

and it was getting real active.

And I woke up one morning and it was like, oh,

I was like, man, I caught it.

The thing was like, you know, it was like a bomb.

Hard as a rock, I should've popped it and let the gas out.

But I was like, all right, I'll put it in the fridge.

And then yesterday my lovely wife,

she opened up the fridge and it just like,

the whole, it was just boom.

I didn't even see it, thank God.

You guys cleaned it up for me, you know, I was very busy.

So point being, they're going to take off,

so you got to be able to let that gas out.

But if you were to put this on sealed tight,

in a couple of days, I guarantee you

that glass is going to blow up.

So be very careful if you're going to do it

and allow for, if not burping, but allow for gas to get out.

Yeah, let me go wash my hands.

[water spraying]

I got a little coffee filter, just as a little gasket,

kind of breathable gasket, as I like to say.

And I just give it a little, couple of little,

little gentle turns and that's going to be

a nice, liquidy base for our glaze and for our sauce,

our spoon sauce to put over the smoked chicken.

The coffee filter, which is nice,

you know, as long as it's not on too tight, you know,

you're not going to go push in

on the wax ring that's inside here.

Just a little loose, so the flies can't get in

and any intruders, this is perfect, just like that.

If you have a little glass weight

where you can push it down, keep things under the liquid,

that's ideal, but this stuff's going to really just take off

and break down and get real soupy soon.

Keep an eye on it, taste it, okay? Don't be scared.

If you see any mold or bad things

or if it makes you nervous, throw it away, all right?

And then just, you lost a few dollars,

you know, and that's just, it is what it is.

That's life sometimes.

[upbeat music]

So yeah, three to four days, room temperature, see you soon.

All right, so we have our tomato,

looking much different here.

Big breakdown of all the cell walls in the tomato,

all that uses came out.

You got a real, real good saucy-looking thing here, right?

And that's awesome. That's what we're looking for.

So now, and this went for about, it was very active.

I'm telling you what, you have to put a system on it,

where you're going to let these de-gas and let the gas out.

And so that's what we're left with.

And now we're just going to pop it all into the blender.

I'm going to pull out all the lemon grass

And I'll put it back into grass for this moment.

'Cause that's really fibery

and that's not going to break down all that well.

Certainly not going to be pleasant in the sauce.

So real gentle pulse here, all right?

We just want to break up that garlic,

any bit of remaining tomato skin and stuff like that.

Just to give it a nice, smooth consistency.

Oh geez.

I'm going to divide it in half,

this bowl being the glaze, which I have some fresh herbs in,

a little bit of more thyme and some fresh tarragon.

And we're gonna put a little bit,

just a little pinch of each in there.

You know, why not?

And we're going to divide that right in half here.

Look at that. That's beautiful.

You can call that gazpacho, if it's like your thing.

So this one being the glaze,

we're going to add a few more things to it,

to kind of sweeten it up and get things going.

I'm going to add a little bit of like a sweetened mirin,

which is a Japanese cooking wine.

Little over a quarter cup of that.

And a little shoyu. Another fermented product.

We're going to add about a quarter cup.

We're going to do about a quarter cup of honey as well.

Local stuff, all right?

A little shout out.

You go on and zoom in on that, bud.

All right. I don't know where this came from.

All Captain Corey over here.

There's a little in the family, right, bud?

A little Connecticut?

Full Bloom A-baries, what a name.

[Corey] It's apiaries.

Apiaries, that's what I said, Corey.

All right and hat else do we need?

We'll add another little pinch of the heat here,

just cause I can't help myself, I'm just in love.

And we'll mix that up. Yeah, buddy.

And we're going to paint that on to the chicken

in about another 20 minutes.

And then for every hour,

we'll just apply that to the chicken

and just let it go and let it go

and it'll build this like really nice

caramelized chicken coating or like little shellacked.

It's amazing, so yeah, we'll finish up our sauce,

which again is just that base.

Taste it, it should be squared away with salt.

You shouldn't have to add anything else like that.

I just like to add a little bit of olive oil.

Again, for this, we'll add about, you know,

this is something that we're going to spoon

over our chicken, so I'm an olive oil guy.

I probably added a generous quarter cup there.

We'll give that a little stir here, right?

I mean, look at that.

All right, so our chicken's been going for about 45 minutes,

almost an hour.

Great.

So yeah, just a real nice little generous

kind of little drop mop there.

And what you want it to do is just kind of sit on there.

It could be a little, so the first one's always a little,

it's going to run off a little bit.

That's why I got some pans or some tinfoil

underneath the grill there to catch.

And what we want this to do is tack up,

sit on that skin as it bakes and cooks and smokes on,

and it'll get tackier.

And the next one it'll even bite a little bit more.

All that stuff, just building up

a really nice sticky coating.

I'll come back in another 40 minutes or so,

45 minutes, see how impatient I get.

We'll put another thick layer on, let it cook,

and then we'll just keep an eye on that temperature

with a little probe thermometer.

[upbeat music]

[bike bell dinging]

Okay, you can get on the back of the bike.

Ready? Whoa!

[glass breaking]

How's the camera?

[Cameraman] One piece.

Good. You gotta be a little more careful.

[beep]

All right, great,

so our chicken's been cooking with that first coating

of the glaze that we made for about 40 minutes or so.

[slide whistle blowing]

Yeah, there we go.

You can see, it's starting to bake on a little bit,

starting to caramelize slightly.

That's what's nice about having, you know,

a pellet, like a Trager or pellet grill like this,

or even like, you know, got a charcoal fire

with a smoker system.

Smokes nice, 'cause it's cooking just like an oven does,

but it also is putting some natural wood smoke on it,

which adds flavor and I just really like

the way chicken comes out in it.

Set a timer or you know, who am I kidding?

You have to set a timer.

30 minutes, 40 minutes, come back here, put another coat on.

I like to get three or four layers of that glaze on

before the chicken is at that internal temperature of 165

in the joint.

[upbeat music]

So this is a sight down here for the compound bow

and when I pull this back, you look this little disc here,

it's called the peep sight,

and you line up these little pins.

They kind of look like they glow,

'cause there's a little bit of a fiber optic

and you hold it steady and it's...

[elevator music]

But point being, you move a quarter inch.

it's gonna jump two inches, you know what I mean?

Just shut up, Brad. Just shoot.

[upbeat rock music]

See, it's addictive. Now I just want to keep shooting.

We should really go check that chicken. Come on.

[beep]

So we had about another 40 minute wait in the smoker there,

running at 230 right now and looking good,

looking nice and caramelly.

Nice and tomato jammy.

The next step for me is going to be a real quick brushing

at around 150 and I'll turn the oven up to 400 degrees

and let this thing crank and you know,

cooking it at that temperature

is going to jump real quick into our safety zone.

The outside of this is going to get a real nice quick,

'cause we've been doing it real slow.

Perfect, we're at 160 now.

So I'm going to turn this up to 400, okay?

Real quick, I'm just going to hit it with the last

of our little liquid, our little glaze,

just to give it a little fresh sugar on there.

We've got a real nice base going.

We gotta close this and we turned it up to 400, 410 degrees.

Much hotter, right?

And them sugars are going to caramelize

and we're going to get a much deeper color on the chicken

and it's going to bring us through

that last little carry over of cooking into perfection

and we're going to have a nicely seasoned, juicy,

smoked, fermented, caramelized chicken.

Woo!

See you in about a seven, eight minutes.

Don't go far, okay?

[elevator music]

[chicken sizzling]

Oh yeah. Yeah, that's what we're looking for.

Tomato, all jammy, baked on there, smoked on there.

[crowd applauding]

We'll let our chicken rest about 10 minutes

and you know, let's get into it.

Look at that. Beautiful.

And then we'll put some of that sauce right over top of it,

which is a really nice kind of spicy, kind of sweet,

nice little olive oily little addition to pour right over.

I mean, look at that.

You have that with some salad or something.

I'd eat that any day of the week.

I do a little tastes here.

Get a little sauce, a little piece of skin on there.

Mmm.

The depth of the flavor from the tomato

slowly caramelizing at the end, that little bit of heat,

it just does something really magical.

And then just gets this undertone of, like,

fresh tomato in a way, you know that?

Every year, I kind of look forward to cooking

a version of this.

And honestly just seasoning that chicken

or whatever piece of meat you do ahead of time

just comes through massively.

It just kind of just transforms

the whole cooking experience.

Oh, look, that's the little oyster right there.

Oh my God.

That's why I leave the backbone on.

There's a couple little, like,

they don't make it to the table pieces on there

that are like a little weird,

but oh my God, they're so good.

Do this at home, guys.

I mean, give it a shot and like, you know,

any recipe that I make or in my book, I mean,

I highly promote that you just kind of riff with them.

You know, there's a good base to it.

Just like this tomato thing, it can help you

kind of get started and then you can apply it

to any type of cooking you want to do.

And that's kind of what I'm all about.

So I hope you guys enjoy this, give it a shot.

And again, I got this book, it's about

all throughout the northeast food adventures that I did.

Presale now and it's available November 9th.

So thanks guys and bon appetit.

I was fighting, I wanted this to be the cover, full-blown.

There's another picture where I don't have pants on

and just a couple of sunflowers covering me

and I thought that was fun, but no one really else did.