So we’re gonna dry that off into paper towels. Now we gotta get. Is that a train? It’s 2021 and trains still exist? Get a horse. Do you spend substantial grocery store time asking yourself, should I really buy that thing, or should I make it from scratch? How do you factor time, money, and enjoyment into your personal food choices? Do you wanna restart to install these updates now, or try tonight? Here’s the key, you always click try tonight. You do that for months on end, the updates are a scam, but then your computer stops working eventually. I should’ve installed the updates, looking back. So today I’m gonna create my own homemade version of Costco’s rotisserie chicken, and see if I can beat the brand in a blindfolded taste judged by my coworkers. Will I beat the brand or will things get ugly and devolve into a malicious food fight, where I smear myself in Gulden’s Brown Mustard and hand cranked onions, and run through the store saying, “I want to return the mustard. You have a liberal return policy. I’d like to return the mustard, Costco!” Let’s find out. What the hell am I talking about? Before we can actually decide if we can beat Costco rotisserie chicken, first you have to understand chicken economics. Now I majored in chicken economics in college, and UCLA kept saying, “Josh, this is not a real major at all and you’re not technically an enrolled student.” Point is rotisserie chickens at Costco, they cost 4.99, and it has been a point of pride for Costco to not raise the price on that. However, chicken should likely cost more than 4.99 for like a whole animal that depending on your religious beliefs, like had a soul, and a family, and loved ones, and all that. What I’m saying is Costco rotisserie chicken is incredibly cheap and it is really delicious. It is very well salted. I think it’s plumped from the inside with saltwater, which makes it super, super tender and delicious, especially when it’s cooked low and slow on that rotisserie. The way that we’re gonna beat Costco chicken is with Costco chicken, because the cheapest chickens we could find were the raw ones from Costco, which very ironically cost about 40 cents more than their cooked rotisserie chickens. These seem like they’re an unbeatable juggernaut here. They’re sandbagging it. They’re out there cooking chickens for less money than the raw chickens that they’re selling. That means we have to make this extra, extra delicious to try and beat Costco, and I got one secret ingredient. Tony Chachere’s. I know what you’re saying. Josh, you’re probably taking money from them. We have not taken a single dime from Tony Chachere’s. We’re just huge fans and also I think I need to put my best foot forward to try and beat Costco chicken here. So I’m gonna make a Tony Chachere’s brine. ’cause when you make a brine, you’re essentially soaking saltwater into the actual flesh of the chicken. The salt creates a reverse osmotic relationship, blah, blah, blah. Point is you soak your meat in salty water. Your meat is gonna taste like salty water. Salty water tastes good. So putting the Tony C’s into a pot and then I’m gonna add all this water to it. Got a quarter of water in there. Gonna add a little bit of sugar because sugar I think is just gonna sweeten the pot, so to speak, and then a little bit of vinegar. Acid tends to tenderize meat. We’re just doing a little bit of vinegar in there just to sort of like balance all that sweet, all that salt, and then all that chicken fat that’s gonna really render through it. Other way to beat Costco chicken, uh, uh, uh, butter. I’m gonna just put a disgusting amount of butter on this. It’s gonna raise the price of what we’re ultimately doing. However, we need to beat Costco in straight up deliciousness. We can’t them in price. We can’t beat them in convenience. I don’t have the supply lines to move 70-inch LCD TVs. Now we’re gonna take this raw chicken. All we’re gonna do is we’re just gonna soak it and then you can like flip it in the fridge. We’re gonna leave it sit overnight. 12 hours is like my ideal brining time for it. Could be as little as two hours. The longer you let it sit, the more all that Tony Chachere’s flavor is gonna get absorbed around the skin. I want it to bathe in Tony C’s. I want it to know Tony’s on an intimate, biblical level before we roast it off. I did imply that Tony C’s is making sex with this chicken. Time to take the chicken out of the bath. How was that? Well, the chicken is in brining for about 12 hours. The liquid’s all nice and murky, so, ooh, that’s chilly. Chicken must’ve been cold. All right. We’re gonna take that. We’re gonna dry it off. It’s really important that you dry it off, ’cause with the rotisserie chicken, we’re not gonna try and go for like extra crackly, crunchy skin or anything, but you also don’t want like the excess moisture on the skin to just kind of like steam it more than it needs to. So we’re gonna dry that off into paper towels. Now we gotta get. Is that a train? It’s 2021 and trains still exist? Get a horse. All right, so we’re gonna dry off this chicken and now we have to start constructing. I can only call it a bootleg rotisserie. I could just do like a normal roast chicken. See if that’s gonna go ahead and beat the Costco, put it on some, you know, root vegetables or like, you know an actual roasting rack. ‘Cause that is a product that exists. But no, we’re gonna create our own rotisserie. Thanks to Reynolds Wrap Foil. So this is what we’re doing. We’re gonna take a bunch of Reynolds Wrap. And we’re just gonna start making, we’re gonna start making a structure. I’m just gonna kinda create a thing. Try and keep a flat bottom. Again, the idea is that this is just gonna like kind of stand here. We’re gonna create a divot for the chicken to stand on and then that is gonna create the room for the air underneath the circulate around the chicken and make it crispy. I think, let’s see. I’m like a street magician. Like Criss Angel Mindfreak, except I’m real. There we go. I wanna get some good height on it and then. It’s getting there. Now, you know what? We got. I made these yesterday with the help of Trevor. Aren’t they cool? I think it’s pretty cool. So what we’re gonna do. We have these things here. You literally just keep balling up foil and eventually punch it down until you get little racks. Take the chicken. You take it off the paper towels. Judo flip. Now I’m gonna take these here skewers and I’m gonna wrap these in a bunch of foil. Honestly foil’s like a really good cooking tool. Invest in some good foil. Get some heavy-duty, get some grillin’ foil. It’s great for camping. It’s also great for glamping. The other day I was on the internet, you know the worldwide web, just surfing, doing the thing, and a Buzzfeed quiz came up and it said, are you a camper or a glamper? I was like, I have never wanted to click on a website less in my entire life, and I’ve had some messed up websites come across my feed. All right, one more. One more go with the foil. This looks like a shalalie. You know shalalie, the ancient blunted battle weapon of the Irish? You guys don’t know shalalie? Educate yourselves, read a freakin’ book. What we’re gonna do. We’ve talked a lot, I think more than most cooking shows about chicken butt holes. They don’t have them. This called a cloaca. You’re gonna take your shalalie. You’re gonna shove it through the cloaca, and then you’re gonna get it through the neck hole. There it is. Easy one, two situation right there. So now we got a rotisserie situation, but you see the bird’s all dangly and floppy. Around here we don’t want that. So we’re gonna tie its legs together. Costco’s rotisserie chicken, they’re all nice and tight, and when you do cook a rotisserie chicken, you want it to cook evenly. You could traditionally truss the chicken. I don’t know how to do that. I’m not gonna be BS you. I’ve just never done it. I don’t really care. So I’m gonna do my janky bootleg I took two months of Boy Scouts and then we couldn’t afford it thing. And I’m just gonna wrap twine around this until it’s kind of tied up nice and tight, kind of Christian Gray action here. He’s a chef, right? Chef Christian Gray? Sue Annabelle? So now we have the legs tied up. You see like we’re starting to get somewhere. It’s still a flippity floppity around. We’re going to pin these wings. I’m gonna take one toothpick. I’m just gonna shove it right through that bone into the chicken. You can pull that toothpick out or you can leave it in, right? It’s like bone-in chicken on bone-in chicken. And then we got our wings nice and tucked. You know I worked as a piercer at Claire’s for three years? You need to shut up. Three years then, no, it was like a 2017 through, yeah. I didn’t get paid. I wasn’t like on the books or anything. And I didn’t like work in Claire’s but I was like outside. So now I’m gonna peel back its skin and I’m gonna shove butter under there. To get the skin kind of loosened, you don’t wanna break the skin because that’s gonna create a nice little fat barrier. Just kind of, Meg, you see my fingers wiggle? Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry. Well, you gotta do it. You gotta get that, and we’re gonna take this whole thing’s butter. I’m gonna shove it under the skin. Again, the way that we beat the Costco, butter. Secret ingredient in cooking, not love is butter. Especially with the breast in rotisserie chicken, like it tends to get super dry. That’s why I like the dark meat. It’s always really nice and tender, and the breast is sometimes dry. You gotta just mix it with a bunch of mayonnaise and stuff. So we’re gonna try and just load up that breast with butter. We’re gonna butter up some breasts. I’m learning a majority of this Beat the Brand series is like let’s see how much butter Josh can put in a dish and trick his friends into eating like a bunch of saturated fat in the morning. But that’s also why food tastes good. All right. So you see the chickens is pregnant with butter now. Preggers with butters. There we go. What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take our racks. Yeah. Come on, it’s rotisserie chicken. You know it’s like if you’re going camping, except you’re not ’cause you’re in your house, and you’re a professional cook, and this isn’t my house. I forget that sometimes. I think I live here. Well, this is it. This is it. This is our rotisserie chicken. We’ve got the butter loaded up on there. I’m gonna take some more Tony Chachere’s and I’m just gonna start seasoning this bird all over. ‘Cause like the brine will get you there. The brine will get you a fair amount of flavor in there, but we do still want the nice flavorful skin. Honestly, if season a chicken right before you cook it, all you’re really doing is seasoning the skin, which is still good ’cause you should get skin on every bite. That’s not the best way to do it. Don’t throw Tony Chachere’s. Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw Tony Chachere’s. All right, so now we have more melted butter. I know what you’re saying. Josh, you’re brushing all the seasoning off. I don’t think so. That doesn’t sound right. You can add more seasoning. The important thing is that you’re constantly getting seasoning and butter all over this chicken. There we go. There we go. Oh, the butter fell in the raw chicken. You’re cooking the whole thing. People are doing that. They’ll go, “Oh, you can never cut meat and vegetables on the same cutting board.” It’s like I’m cooking a stew for eight hours! What’s gonna happen? All goes in the same place. Just think. Use your frickin’ brain. Should I start cooking like Bill Burr? Oh no. Oh, you millennials out here. You’re out there roasting your chickens like no one in the history of the world has ever roasted a chicken. Billions of people have survived by eating raw chicken. Oh, you think your ancestors, the Neanderthals went out there with their sous vide machines going, “Oh honey, all the sous vide is gonna go to 130 degrees.” Get the out of here. Is that a good Bill Burr? That felt like a good Bill Burr. Add a little. Chicka chicka. God, this looks horrifying. What the hell did we do? Well now what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna take this. We’re gonna pop it in a 400 degree oven. If you have a convection setting, turn that on. We do not. Let it cook for a half hour and then after that, we’re gonna flip it every 15 minutes until the internal temp of the breast reads exactly 152.3 degrees. Chicken’s been in the oven for about half an hour. We’re gonna take it out and we’re gonna baste it. We’re gonna flip it and baste it, you’ll see. Okay, come here chicken. Give me your bird meat. So now you have to become the rotisserie. So check this out. Shoot. You did it! Yeah, you know, we’re not, nothing’s perfect. You’re not perfect. You’ve made mistakes in your life, you know? You haven’t planned. Now we’re gonna take some more butter and we’re just gonna wipe the butter on the chicken skin. There we go. Get some butter on the backside of that chicken. And now back in the oven we’re gonna let this go for 15 minute. Hold on. Oh, oh, oh, I’m just gonna get some underneath. Okay, now we’re gonna get this back in the oven. Get back in your cage of hell, chicken! One more time, you great chicken. Come here. Oh, this is starting to look nice and exciting. Look at that. We got all that Tony C’s. We got all that Tony’s. Tony C’s. We got a bunch of that spice really caramelized in that skin. We flipped it a couple more times. Internal temp right now is about 145 degrees. We want it in there for another 10 minutes to get up to that 150 mark so we eventually creep to 160. What I’m gonna do now is I’m gonna take lemon juice and I’m gonna squeeze it over this. I like doing it towards the end of the cooking process ’cause that lemon juice is gonna evaporate on to it. It’s gonna get that skin like a nice acidic bite and I think this is another little tip. We’re gonna beat the Costco, you know? There we go. Nice and covered in lemon juice. I’m gonna throw it back in one more time. Whew, whew! I’m sweating over this chicken. Chicken’s done. I’ll pull it out of the oven. See how she’s lookin’. It’s not a Fat Bastard accent. It’s any Scotsman! I ate a chicken! This is it. This is the chicken. All right, let’s talk time and money here. This is Costco’s rotisserie chicken. This cost 4.99 at the Costco. Takes roughly zero minutes to get and prepare ’cause it is just hot, and wet, and steamin’ when you get it. Ours costs $7.72 to actually create once you factor in all the butter. The downside is it took about 14 hours if you factor in the brining. You don’t have to brine it, but we did. So we need to factor in 14 hours. If we try and beat Costco on just blunt force taste to the face. Face taste coming your way, Costco. All right, so we’ve got the two rotisserie chickens here. You see Costco’s. They have us beat on wetness. That the wettest chicken I ever seen. They put it off the spit into this thing. It steams. This is our rotisserie chicken, which looks super, super crispy, and also still juicy. I’m really hopeful about this. I’m gonna give it a taste. That breast is still nice and juicy. Ooh, give me your meat, bird. I mean this, this is exactly what I wanna see. You can press it and actually see the juices coming out. I’m gonna shplap it down in that butter real quick. The breast is where we win. The breasts will lead us to victory. It’s such a juicy chicken breast. It’s gonna be so much juicier than this. Costco might have us beat a little bit on tenderness. I don’t know, man. I’m going into this with a lot of hope. We got a lot of spice up, that Tony C’s. I’m really proud of the work with it. Nicole, Vee, Trevor, who’s somewhere else. Proud of the work that we do. I think this is a really good chicken. I’m biased. I put a lot of work into this. Doesn’t matter what I think. Let’s see what the judges think. Mikayla, before you, there are two rotisserie chickens. One from Costco, one from myself. Mine is made with love. Costco’s is made with spite and cheap ingredients. Are you prepared to taste test these? I don’t know if I wanna taste spite but let’s go for it. Oh, you’re about to. Are you familiar with rotisserie chicken? Do you enjoy the dish? I think so. You’ve heard of it, you’ve heard of it. I’ve heard of it. This is dish number one, white meat. Airplane in the hangar. Mm, oh God. Sorry. Oh yeah, big, big pieces. I’m a big eater. Is it juicy, is it dry? Is it tender, is it flavored? It’s a little dry. But it has a decent flavor to it. Okay. All right, well you got that going. Let me pick you out a piece from dish number two. Coming in. This is a, it’s a big one. Okay. I don’t know why I cut them that big. I’m sorry. Mm. First impression, good? Way better. Yeah, off the bat, just immediate. There was an attempt to make it juicier and I appreciate it. All right Mikayla, what is your official score for dish number one? Dish number one is gonna be a five Five, and your score for dish number two? That one’s gonna be a nine. Ooh, nine. That’s a good chicken. Mikayla, remove your blindfold. Okay. Dish number two, I feel like this is obvious, this is mine. You can taste the love, right? Yeah. The love is also known as juiciness. Yeah, there was a lot of love. My love is juice, juice is my life. Yeah. And definitely we got a lot more seasoning in this ’cause we we wet brined this. We used a bunch of Tony Chachere’s in there. A bunch of Creole Cajun seasoning. That’s just good stuff. Yeah, good old Tony C’s. All right, there’s one more variable that we have to consider here. Not just taste. So Costco, their whole rotisserie chicken only costs 4.99. When you buy a raw chicken from Costco, it costs $5.38, and that’s what we used. This total is 7.72. And also we did spend roughly 14 hours to make it ’cause we brined it overnight. That’s the flavor, though. Remember how much you loved the flavor? Yeah, the flavor was. Ah! So would you say that this is 14 hours worth of your time? You don’t have to be cooking the whole time. You set it and forget it. But is this 14 hours worth of better flavor? I personally think so, just because I would rather have a juicy chicken than a dry one. Life’s too short for dry chicken. It really is. Honestly. You really need to appreciate a good chicken. Put some respect on the bird. This is off to a great start, Mikayla. Thank you. You’re welcome. Chappie, this is your first time on camera at Mythical Entertainment, is that correct? Yes. Would you like to play an icebreaker game? Yeah, sure. Okay, my favorite thing is tell the audience while you’re blindfolded, what your biggest regret in life is and what your biggest fears are? I would say my biggest fear is not finding true love, but what’s good is I have. For now. Chappie, before you there are two dishes. One rotisserie chicken made by the Costco. One rotisserie chicken made by myself. I will feed you them while you are blindfolded and you will rate each on a score of one to 10. Do you feel prepared to fulfill your duty? Yes. All right, in comes dish one. Wait, you gotta bit. It’s in front of you. It’s in front of me? Just bite down. No no, it’s in front of your mouth. What, where? Oh God, I dropped some. Oh Chappie, no. Sorry, it’s coming. I’m so sorry. I fudged that up. That’s me. That’s not on you, that’s on me. All right, now focus. It tastes like dark meat in that it’s like a little fattier. Is it seasoned well, is it juicy? Is it dry? It’s not dry. It’s juicy, it’s good. All right. Let me go dish number two. Now this is a much bigger piece. I don’t know how we ended up with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it. The prongs of a fork kind of mash in the back like a dentist. What are your first impressions? Other than that I don’t know how to cut food. It’s bigger. It’s not as like just instantly oily. I can taste more than just salt, which is nice. I don’t wanna say it’s not as juicy, ’cause it’s still juicy, but it’s not as just like immediately oily, which I think the first one was. It’s the fine line between like greasy and juicy, right? Yeah. First one might’ve been a little greasy. Second one not so much. I’m ready to score it. You’re ready to score? All right, dish number one. What is your score out of 10? I would say dish number one would be six out of 10. That’ll get you a degree in some non-licensed institutions. Dish number two, I’d say 8.5 out of 10. 8.5, first ever half point. We’re counting it. Take off your blindfold to reveal the big reveal, they’re both chicken. Oh wow. It’s true. Yeah, I made that one. But no, I think you’re dead right. I mean this one, you’re gonna get a little bit more grease ’cause I think they use a really fattier just like commodity chicken on it. Tried to get a little bit of a cleaner flavor on this one. Definitely used more than salt. We got a bunch of Creole Cajun seasoning on there. Nice, it tasted good. There is one more variable in this and that is time and money. So Costco, you can go in, get this for no time at all at 4.99 already cooked. The raw chicken at Costco is literally more expensive than the cooked chicken. So you’re already buying this for 5.38. Once you but all the seasoning, the butter, you have the foil on there. This comes out to $7.72. But we also spent 14 hours brining this and preparing it. Well, brining’s just waiting. Brining’s just waiting. But do you think this has 14 hours worth of more flavor in an extra $2? I don’t know. My mom buys the Costco one and she makes a really good chicken salad out of it. And you can take this and like add a lot of other things to it and make it like a whole meal. So I don’t know. That’s a fair point. That’s a fair point. That’s a fair point. I mean, you’re buying convenience in this and then you can manipulate it however you want to. Yeah, there’s pros and cons to both. If you’re getting a whole chicken, you’re probably not gonna wait 14 hours, especially when this already existed. Five bucks and you can turn it into whatever you want. Yeah. You are very strong in opinion. Chappie, thank you so much for your fair judgment. Yeah. And welcome to Mythical Entertainment, Chappie! Davin, before you there are two chickens. One made by the Costco, one made by the Joshco. I will feed you them as you are blindfolded with my bare hands, trying avoid any thumb to lip contact. Feed me your meat. I will feed you your meat. There’s the old Davin. It’s been a while. Good to have you back, man. Yeah, no. All right, so you’re gonna score each dish on a scale of one to 10. Okay. Do you feel prepared? I feel prepared. You’re quite the chicken connoisseur, right? Yeah, I’m familiar with rotisserie chicken. Unlike, you know, pumpkin pies. Yeah, I forgot. We fed him pumpkin pie and he’d never had it. Yeah. Yeah, this is just bird meat. You’re just rating bird meat on bird. Yeah. What could possibly go wrong. All right Davin, get ready for the meat in your mouth. He started it, come on. Am I getting like a dark meat, white meat? Oh, you can have your choice. I was gonna start with white meat by defacto but we have every single part of the bird. I like drumstick. You like drumstick? Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s make this even more suggestive. Davin, drumstick coming in. Okay. I’m feeding you the best part of the drumstick so you’re gonna have to kind of, there it is. There’s a hungry mouth. Okay. I taste all the grease in my mouth. That’s a sign of good chicken. You like the greasy chicken? I like the grease, yeah. I’m with you, man. I don’t think chicken can be greasy enough. Mm hm. Davin, are you ready for meat number two to go into your mouth? Yes, I swallowed the first one. Like a gentleman, all right. In we go. Mm. Oh, you got the tendon. You got the tendon, here let it grab it. I like tendon, man. Tendon’s good. Davin, you’re the best. The first second my tongue touches that meat, I already taste the flavor. So this is definitely better flavor-wise. It’s also better grease-wise. Better flavor, less bad grease. Better good grease. Do you wanna try any other part of the chicken? We got wing, we got thigh. You seem like you’re having a great time. You eat some bird. I think I’m ready to make my decision. You’re ready to make your decision? Yeah. Love that, confident man. Dish one, a scale of one to 10. What are your thoughts? Four. Four, ooh brutal. Dish number two. Nine. Wow, that means that we have officially beaten the brand. We outscored them 26 and a half to 15. I mean, this was. That’s a lot, man. A smattering. We smattered them in the face. With clean grease, though. With clean grease. With clean grease. But Davin, there’s one more thing we have to take into account. So Costco costs $5, obviously takes no time to get. This costs $7.72 and we did spend a total of 14 hours to make it cause we brined it. That’s where the flavor comes from, Davin. So you get the good grease. Okay, I guess it is worth it if you wanna meal prep and eat whole rotisserie chicken for the entire week? That is true. It’s healthy. It’s an investment. It’s an investment, yeah. You’re saying you would probably spend the 14 extra hours and extra couple bucks to get this good of a chicken. I mean with $5 though, you can spend that $9 as a Dogecoin. To the moon! I know nothing about Dogecoin. But what about you? Are you gonna spend the $5 at Costco or are you gonna make your own rotisserie chicken with the love of your own hands so you can bless your friend with your meat, just like I did with Davin. Let us know in the comments. Davin, thank you so much for helping me Beat the Brand today and thank you so much for stopping by the “Mythical Kitchen.” We got new episodes for you every week. We got new episodes of our podcast every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. Hit us up on Instagram @mythicalkitchen. I’m gonna feed you my meat now. Feature your original dishes on our hashtag #dreamsbecomefood. So much sexual innuendo in such a short amount of time. That’s what I’m here for. Producer’s brain. Get as messy as you want in your kitchen when you have the “Mythical Kitchen” towel. Available now at mythical.com.