water coming out of my chicken in the oven - why?

I like roast chicken thighs, cooked in the oven with very high heat so they get a nice crust and stay juicy inside. 

Sometimes i make them fairly plain, more often with a dry rub of some sort (salt, paprika, pepper, crushed coriander seed, pink pepper, ginger, sumac, za'atar, thyme, brown sugar, hot pepper flakes etc- not all at the same time, but some combination), or I may marinate.  Sometimes with soy sauce, sometimes with lemon, sometimes with buttermilk or yoghurt. 

I cook them at very very high heat, sometimes directly on the floor of the oven, at the max heat the oven will do. 

The problem is, sometimes i get a nice crisp dry cooking, with no liquid in the pan, and sometimes as soon as the chicken is getting warm it releases a ton of liquid. 

It happened tonight when had done a marinade with yoghurt and lemon and salt and a bunch of spices.  I had taken the advice in another thread about the advantages of brining.  I presume this was like a brine - liquid, sort of, and salt.  I marinated it for about 8 hours.I didn't leave it wet, but i left some of the yoghurt stuck to it, but when i use a wetter marinade, like with soy or lemon, i dry the meat, but it seems to be irrelevant, the liquid comes from inside

I;ve noticed they are sometimes no liquid escapes and somtimes it does, and never thought to consider if it was when marinating or not.  I know that hormones fed to chickens make them retain water, or so i read.  That could account for the release of water, i guess.  But maybe it could be the fact that it absorbs liquid in the marinade?  Could it be that sometimes i don;t salt the meat till i put it in the oven and other times i put the salt in when i let it marinate or sit in its rub?

I'll have to try a dry rub next time with no salt and a wet one with no salt and see if it leaks. 

Any ideas?

 

No, I don't, actually, but the one i used this time is a really good butcher, with great meat.  Of course, anyone can cheat.  I don't do the marinade very often, but what you;re implying is that "brining" or marinating is not all it;s cracked up to be?

Next time i will try both and see what happens.   

 

No, i really don't think so.  I never heard of that here.  I sure hope not, anyway.  But isn't marinating or brining sort of the same thing (that's what i keep trying to understand).  I can imagine if you grill it or roast a large bird, you won't find it sitting in water, but if you cook in a pan, it all leaks out.  Or not?

 

Nah, these chickens are not pumped before selling, they're all very scrawny here!  

But i do notice conflicting messages on the brining business.  Some say yes, some say no.  It's a big pain in the neck for me, so I'll go with no. 

My chicken always comes juicy unless i get distracted and leave it in the oven too long .... but it's hard to be distracted with that lovely aroma filling the house. 

 

They're fresh thighs.  The brand?  the other day they were no brand. Another time they were the usual supermarket brands - Pollo Arena, La Corte - or supermarket non brands. 

 

Well it might be "juice" but it's made mostly of H2O!  And H2O makes the chicken boil rather than broil.  If i don't drain it every couple of minutes i get it sitting in a wet baking sheet (and i use a very low sided pan, so it won't form steam).  It never really browns like i like it that way.  Other times it lets off fat, but no water.  No doubt the sauce you reduce from this is good, but i want the crusty meat, and could care less about sauce, in that case. 

 

Thought of that, but i like the kind of browning I get with the food touching the hot pan (I have a very large pretty thick aluminum low-sided roasting pan) when it's on the floor of the oven or on a very low rack.  Trouble is, i don't know when it's going to leak water and when it isn't.  Anyway, it will sort of steam from the water at the bottom I would think, no?
 

You'd think, but there is no salt taste, and I do believe it;s illegal here - people are extremely fussy about that sort of thing, and chickens are very small and not very fat (round) at all - to the extent that once i was in a supermarket with a friend in Boston and I said "what kind of bird is that?" thinking it was a turkey or something and she said it was a chicken.  Never saw a chicken that big here.  Looks like something from Woody Allen's Sleeper with the gigantic vegetables and animals from the future. I think the pieces would look big and kind of plump if it had been treated. 

Nothing on the label - no ingredients at all, except "chicken"

I wonder if, illegally, they;ve been fed hormones?

 

I don't have much hope of getting a straight answer from either the butcher (who will probably deny that water comes out of his chicken) or the supermarket or the producer of the chickens at the supermarket (the butcher has his own, which come from someone he knows but it's not written anywhere.)  (His beef is exceptional, mind you.  Chanina steaks that are wonderful.  But you don't get far around here with that sort of inquiry). 

Once i had the gall to ask a bookstore owner why the books were arranged by publisher rather than author - i asked very nicely.  He YELLED at me and told me to mind my own business and he knew the best way to organize a bookstore!  But that is not an isolated incident.  Any question is likely to be taken as an accusation and responded to in kind.