I recently learned with delight that many recipes for the 18th century Joe Frogger cookie called for seawater.

 

 

With an ingredient as charming as seawater, and a full cove of it at the bottom of my hill, I wasn’t going to stop at cookies.

I poached a chicken in seawater.  And then I took the treasured seawater chicken broth, cut it with some tap water, and cooked potatoes in it, into which I afterward stirred butter and whole milk for the most deliciously authentic Mashed Potatoes any New Englander has ever eaten.

 

 

The poached chicken bested any brined anything; it was all the tags a chicken should be, and the most of each:  moistest, plumpest, tenderest.  It had just the faintest hint of salt, and yes  - I swear - a low, moody, background flavor of minerals, like the smell of wind in the pine trees on a cold November day on the Gloucester coast.

 

 

Some people cook lobsters and clams in seawater, but that is so comfortable -  as in the lobster never leaves home  - it doesn’t feel exciting to me, not like poaching a roaster in the Atlantic.  “Mermaid Chicken,” my daughter called it.

Of course, looking for both reasons NOT to cook things in seawater and reasons TO cook things in seawater, I Googled it.  I found only short, obscure chats from people on boats asking other people on boats, “can I DO this?”

No one had a reason not to, besides the obvious salty one.  I wanted  research that claimed cooking with seawater provides a spa’s worth of important  minerals not available any other way.

If only for the romance of it, poaching a chicken - or try your own recipes - salmon?  pasta?  - is worth a try.  But, my chicken honestly tasted so delicious, I’m convinced there will someday be research - probably out of the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen - declaring seawater-poached foods restorative and curative, the next spa cuisine.

Our Thanksgiving Day mashed potatoes will be boiled in Folly Cove seawater.

 

 

 

Seawater Chicken

serves 4-6

 

Ingredients

enough seawater to fill a large stockpot

1 5-6 pound chicken

3 small to medium onions, halved

5 bay leaves

 

Instructions

Choose seawater from a relatively deep, quick-moving body of water, not shallow water at low-tide.

Pour collected seawater through cheesecloth for an extra cleanse.

Rinse off the chicken and remove the inner giblets, et al.  Place the chicken in a stockpot.  Place onions and bay leaves around chicken.  Pour seawater over to cover.

Bring to a simmer, and cook covered for approximately 45 minutes, depending on the size of your chicken.  If the thigh is loose when wiggled, the chicken is probably done.

Remove from heat, and take chicken out of the seawater onto a board or into a large bowl to cool until ready to serve.

The chicken can be carved into pieces as it is, and served with cranberry sauce, or Italian parsley sauce, or it can be cut into four large chunks:  down the breast bone and across the breast bone, leaving the skin on.  The pieces can then be placed under a broiler so the skin gets brown and crispy.  The seawater makes the skin delicious with broiling.

Save the broth.  It is particularly salty, but when cut 50:50, broth to tap-water it is a delicious way to cook vegetables.

 

Seawater Potatoes

serves 6

 

Ingredients

1 cup of the broth reserved from the chicken above

1 cup tap water

6 medium potatoes

1 bay leaf

2 tablespoons butter in pieces

1/2 - 1 cup whole milk

Instructions

Peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters.  Put in a medium saucepan and cover with the broth and water.  Add the bay leaf, and simmer until the potatoes flake apart. Drain, and place the potatoes back into the pot.  Stir in the butter, whisking well to break up potatoes.  Keep stirring, and begin to add milk, a little at a time.  Use a whisk, and finish adding the milk until the potatoes are your preference for flavor and texture.