Has anyone tried this recipe before...and if so, did you marinate it for the entire 24 hours?
Yes, I do it all of the time, sometimes over 30 hours. The direction call for a 24 hour bath for Cornell Chicken, where as Chiavetta's and Spiedie usually both call for a 4 hour marinade. Some people confuse the three, but the recipes are similar but Chiavetta's and Spiedie have extra ingredients for flavor.
Numerous recipes show the same ingredients, but the marination times vary from 3-4 hours to 3-24 hours, to a full 24 hours. I tried it this past weekend but only marinated the chicken for about 3 hours. (I didn't want to wait until the next day) The result was very good. It had a 'bit' of a 'tang' to it, but in a good way, and I attribute it to the apple cider vinegar.
The tang maybe attributed to cider vinegar, but l have never had the "tang". I'm not saying it wasn't there, I have just never noticed it. But then again, I don't baste additional sauce when cooking (because of the vinegar), which may be the reason I don't taste it?
If you added the montreal chicken rub, but if you didn't baste because the rub was on, this might be the reason you didn't have tang?
To add to that, I personally hate vinegar, I can't even stand the smell of it. I usually tell people that if they can taste vinegar, they probably didn't have the coals hot enough or maybe the chicken wasn't close enough to the coals. But if you smoked the chicken, or cooked on a gas grill you wouldn't have the heat. Of if you basted while cooking I guess the vinegar is still present.
With that said, I can't see marinating it any longer than 4 hours, thinking that the 'tang' would be overpowering if left to marinate past 4 hours, let alone 24 hours. Is there the possibility that the 'tang' would not be overpowering if left in the marinade for longer periods of time?
Traditionally marinades do not penetrate deep into the meat, but this will if left for 24 hours.
The goal of the Cornell Chicken sauce is to make very tender yet very moist chicken with very thin crispy skin. It really doesn't add a lot of flavor, but rather brings forward the natural flavor and sweetness of the chicken. Unless you add other spices, or a very light dusting of a rub, you just have the natural flavors of the chicken that really stand out.
I'm wondering now if I do a full 24 hour marinade and add the Montreal's, that I can end up with the flavor profile from yesterday's chicken....but with the added 'tang' to it as well.
Again, I believe you will get just tender, moist, chicken after 24 hours as we do.
If you read Dr. Bakers pamphlet, he discusses the cinder-block pit relating to very hot coals an moving/flipping the rack over direct heat to indirect heat to allow even cooking of the chicken.
My 50+ years of experience in Western NY and Central NY eating Cornell or Chiavetta's chicken, I have never tasted vinegar or a tang in either of them. The chicken always comes off the hot pit hot, juicy, and tender. But again I don't see them basting the the large quantities of chicken cooking on the block pits.
At NY State fair, county fairs, local town festivals, church, and firehouse fundraisers, people stand in line for hours to get a delicious chicken dinner. Some fundraisers are sold out a month in advance of the scheduled fundraiser, thousands of meals served in just a single day.
