Roasting Chickens In Flower Pots? TikTok Is Unsure About This Technique

You can brine it, marinate it, sprinkle it with a spice rub, glaze it, and slather it with a tangy sauce. You can stir-fry it, pan-fry it, deep-fry it, smoke it, poach it, and roast it. You can simmer it in a slow cooker,  crisp it up in an air fryer, and braise it in an Instant Pot. If you have any leftovers, you can strip the carcass to make soup, sandwiches, and salads. We're talking about chicken, a nutritious and supremely versatile meat. Use parts like breasts, thighs, and wings and you can wing it with recipes, even on busy weekdays (per National Chicken Council). "Chicken is the ubiquitous food of our era, crossing multiple cultural boundaries with ease,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

There are times you might get bored with cooking, but chicken need never be boring. It gives cooks everywhere a blank canvas for creativity. And that includes the methods for cooking it. You can cook it upright, on top of a beer can, a technique popularized by author Steven Raichlen, but invented by others. You can cook it under a bucket, low and slow, until crispy and tender (per YouTube). And you can even roast it in a clay pot, the kind usually reserved for flowers and plants. Anything and everything is possible with chicken, but TikTok is somewhat on the fence about "Flower Pot Chicken.”

TikToker @hottuesdays, who describes themselves as a fan of good food and bad TV, provides commentary and play-by-play as they watch a cook prepare a chicken in a terra cotta flower pot. The inside of the pot is coated with butter and studded with garlic cloves. To the pot, the cook adds olive oil, plus a whole chicken with an onion and whole carrots stuffed into its cavity. "Things are gonna get juicy in there with that veg,” the TikToker announces in the video. Meanwhile, the cook slits a dozen or so peeled potatoes on skewers and wraps them in bacon before transferring them to a Dutch oven. "Is this the best meal that I've ever seen?” they ask. "Maybe.” The clay pot holding the chicken sits on a rack, which is then placed over the Dutch oven. When the stacked roasters come out of the oven, the cook uses a hammer to pry the chicken loose and dumps the contents in a large, flat dish. "The skin looks undesirable,” the narrator says of the chicken, "but I'm sure it's delicious.”

TikTok is somewhat divided about this roasting technique. "Ooof, I would not do this,” one commenter noted. "Terra cotta is porous and will never be able to be cleaned, not to mention what was on it before the food touched it.” Adds another: "The clay pot is an excellent heat conductor. This has big traditional vibes and I love it.”

Cooking a chicken in a flower pot might seem unusual to some, but it's not far afield from the Moroccan custom of cooking with a tagine. A tagine is the Moroccan equivalent of a slow cooker. It's a rounded clay or ceramic vessel with low sides and a cone-shaped cover or lid. Tagine is a name that also refers to the food prepared in the pot: stews made with beef, chicken, fish/seafood, vegetables, herbs and spices, dried fruits and nuts, and other ingredients (per MasterClass).

Search the hashtag #flowerpotchicken on Instagram and you'll find a few examples of the technique in faraway places — one calls to mind a clay pot version of the classic Weber kettle grill (per Instagram). A grilling/roasting method for chicken favored by at least one bazaar vendor in Kuala Lumpur utilizes giant clay planters in a slightly different way than that featured on TikTok (per The Star). There, the cook takes chicken that has been marinated in a family recipe chock-full of herbs and spices, including ginger and curry leaves, and places it in a large, earthenware pot that "looks exactly like a flower pot.” The chicken-in-a-pot is placed over a charcoal fire, covered with a smaller clay pot, and roasted for an hour, during which time the chicken is turned over at intervals and glazed with butter.