On Food and Cooking

intact, and preserve its leatheriness. A
crisp skin is easier to obtain with a dry-
processed bird — kosher or halal, for
example — whose skin hasn’t been
plumped with added water (p. 143). It also
helps to let the bird air-dry uncovered in
the refrigerator for a day or two, and to oil
the skin before roasting. (Oiling improves
heat transfer from hot oven air to moist
meat.) The cooked bird should be served
promptly, since crisp skin quickly
reabsorbs moisture from the hot meat
beneath, and becomes flabby as it sits on
the plate.
For some purposes, meats may be partly
precooked at a relatively low oil temperature,
and then cooked through and browned at a
higher temperature just before serving. Fast-
food fried chicken is prepared in special
pressure cookers (p. 785), which fry at the
usual oil temperatures, but raise the boiling
point of water, so that less of the moisture in