Talking about variables…Not only do ovens vary and can indeed be “off” on temperature. The electric oven I have now (I love a gas stove.) is not uniform on the inside. When I bake large pans of bread or rolls I have to turn the pan so that they all brown uniformly.
Something else you may notice when baking, cooking and roasting. Fat content can alter the cooking process. Meats with higher fat content will roast more quickly than lean cuts. This is very obvious when you make an old fashioned meat loaf. In the old days we used hamburger and laid a piece of bacon over the top. That sucker would get done in 45 minutes to an hour in a 350 oven. And there would be a good inch of fat standing in the pan. Now I use the leanest ground beef possible, omit the bacon and it takes quite a bit longer for the loaf to get done in the middle. (One of my daughter’s favorites along with cube steak, go figure, she wants to be a chef. Hope her tastes inprove or she’ll end up cooking at the local Craker Barrel. LOL)
A good rule of thumb too is the larger the item; chicken, turkey, roast etc. the lower the cooking temperature and the longer the cooking time. You can always cover the meat with foil or a lid and brown it during the last minutes of the cooking process.
One way to help keep your chickens from drying out is to rub the skin with a little olive oil before roasting. This will help the skin crisp up nicely and keep the internal juices sealed inside. Also do not “stick” them for doneness. A meat thermometer inserted into the largest portion of thigh after a sufficent cooking time should do the trick. You don’t want to poke a lot of holes in the skin so the juices will escape.
When I had a gas grill we used to roast whole chickens all the time. We loved them on the grill. I would first rub them with oil, then season with salt and pepper. Often I would put garlic cloves and herbs inside the cavity or insert them under the skin. (Which I do when roasting in a oven too.) I’d put the chicken directly on the rack and turn the burner off on that side, then close the lid, leaving the other side on medium to medium high. They cooked in no time and the skin always came out crisp with the flesh juicy and tender.
Only problem with this, you end up having a chicken that doesn’t have that lovely crisp skin on the breast.
I’d never cook a bird at 250° as it would take far too long to cook–hence, it would dry out the meat. You want to keep poultry for the smallest amount of time it takes to get to proper internal temperature. Also, when you reach 165° internal temperature, this is when you need to pull the bird out of the oven, not turn up the heat! A process called carry-over cooking happens to meats, they will actually go up another 5° to 10° in internal temperature once pulled out of the oven, as the external temperature evens itself out.
With my training, I was taught that you want to sear the skin first, as it will help seal in juices–that is the reasoning behind the high temperature first. If the skin on the breast starts to brown too much, then a piece of foil is tented over the breast to control it. This is general industry standard.
I don’t know if or when I’ll be back to SDMB in view of some inappropriate responses I got to other posts, which predictably included quoting me out-of-context without inclusion of their original aggression. I might be more inclined to enjoy these boards if the SDMB webmaster could possibly program something along the lines of redline rule (such, that if anyone begins a post, and then they find that a member responded either inappropriately, or else not to-the-point, the original poster should be offered the prerogative of “semi-censorship”, with a choice of these 2 options:
Either a Big Red-X running-through an inappropriate response
Or a Big Green-X running-through a not-to-the-point response.
