Woman Uses $400 Hair Dryer to Roast Chicken

A food writer has revealed her secret to making perfectly roasted chicken: her $400 hairdryer.

Food writer Helen Rosner stunned Twitter when she posted a photo of herself using her $400 Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer to blow-dry a whole chicken, writing “Happy snow day, I am using an astonishingly expensive hair dryer to remove all moisture from a chicken to maximize skin crispiness when I roast it.”

The unique process, which has since been retweeted nearly 200 times, liked more than 1,500 times, and received more than 100 comments, is reportedly a very important step in roasting a chicken, and is even included in Rosner’s recipe for her perfectly crispy skinned roasted chicken, which she shared in a later tweet.

“Using a handheld hair dryer on the Cool setting, blow air all over the chicken, making sure to dry any parts of the chicken that are still damp, particularly the underside of the bird and inside the cavity,” she writes in the second step of the recipe.

According to Rosner, who spoke with Allure, removing the moisture from the chicken is important before putting it in the oven, and using her hairdryer speeds up the process.

“For crisp skin, whether you’re cooking a chicken or a duck or a fish, you want there to be as little water moisture as possible, which is sped up by a fan. And that’s all a hair-dryer really is — a hand-held fan that you can pretty easily bring into the kitchen,” Rosner told Allure.

Rosner doesn’t take credit for the idea, though, claiming that cookbook author Marcella Hazan was “the progenitor of the idea” in the 1970s. She also gives a little credit to Food Network star Alton Brown, who has a recipe for homemade beef jerky that calls for using a box fan.

For those wanting to try the method out, Rosner says that a pricey hairdryer isn’t needed.

“You could use any hair dryer on the chicken — even one that doesn’t have a ‘cool’ setting, though it’ll smell a little chickeny while you heat-style it,” she explained.