Alright, the title of this recipe says…. chicken breast. And I know what people say – that chicken breast is dry and tasteless. But not MY chicken breast. 🙂
Chicken breast is elegant, and if prepared with skill, (like I do :)), it’s an object of beauty. A half-breast of chicken, very tender and juicy, panfried to a golden perfection. Accompanied by a rich, dark, earthy mushroom sauce.
And no, you don’t need that sous vide machine. Chicken leg? No, it just doesn’t go as well, it just ain’t that elegant.
It’s simple. You just need…… attention, and a little bit of love for a lovely breast.
Timeline
You need time for this – the secret is an overnight soak in salty water.
One day ahead : brine the chicken breast, make stock with the bones, soak dried mushrooms
One hour before : make the sauce, and thicken it.
Just before : pan fry chicken
Ingredients and prep (serves 4)
- 2 whole, bone in, skin-on chicken breasts (about 500 g each)
- Water
- Salt
- Dried mixed forest or porcini mushrooms (just a couple of slices per serving)
- Herbs, fresh if possible.
- Fresh button mushrooms – 3 or 4 mushrooms per serving
- For roux : all purpose flour and unsalted butter
Another word on the chicken – I am asking here for a whole, intact, skin-on chicken breast, I really, really think chicken deserves to have its skin on. When I see people rip skin of chicken, I feel a stab of pain. It breaks my heart. If you do it, don’t tell me.
Day before : Brining and Stocking
A day ahead, you need to debone the chicken breast (keep skin on) and brine them.
What you need to know is this :
- Brining makes meat tender (I don’t really know why, despite reading a bit about it)
- Most people find a salt content of just under 1 percent just right. I use 0.7%
Now you know why you brine, and how much salt to use.
This is how – place a large container on a weighing scale and tare. Lay the chicken in, and top up enough cold water to cover them. Note the combined weight of the chicken and water. The salt you need is 0.7% of that. So, if you have a kilogram (1000g) of chicken and water, you need 7 g of salt – about two teaspoons. Easy right? Ensure the salt dissolves entirely, of course.
Leave the chicken soaking in this brine overnight in the fridge. The saltiness of the water and chicken should reach an equilibrium in this time, giving you 0.7% salinity throughout.
Since you have the chicken breast bones, its good to make the chicken stock the same day. Simmer the bones, skim, and toss in some root veggies and aromatics if you want. Strain. While stock is still hot, toss in the dried mushrooms to soak. Let it cool and then fridge.
Final prep and mise
It’s D-Day, you are about to impress your guests.
About an hour before, you want to retrieve the chicken breasts from the brine, and pat them dry with a towel. Sprinkle some herbs on the meat side (keep herbs off the skin side). Set aside.
Next, you need to adjust and thicken the sauce. You need about 100 ml of sauce per serving. Heat up and taste the chicken-mushroom soup from the previous day. It should be rich with the earthy taste of mushrooms, but will likely need more flavour. I find that a touch of Marmite yeast extract is prefect – it adds colour as well as a deep, yeasty taste that perfectly complements the earthy mushroom flavours.
When you are happy with the sauce, you need to thicken it. You can use corn starch, but for best results, use a roux. I use about 5% weight of flour and 5% butter to get the right among of roux. That is, for 400 ml of sauce, you need 20g of flour and 20 g of butter. Place a saucepan on medium heat, melt the butter, add in the flour, and stir till the roux is just a tad brown and eludes a nice caramel smell. Mix into the sauce, and stir in hard to eliminate lumps. Keep sauce warm.
Slice the mushrooms. You are set.
Cook
Remember, the end result should be : golden chicken breast, crispy on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside.
If you are really serious about this, use a probe thermometer, the magic number is 63 deg C.
Heat up a fry pan, oil it, and wait till the oil simmers. Lay the chicken, skin side down, on the fry pan, and it should sizzle and pop. The chicken will spend most of its cooking time on the skin side. (And that is why, you don’t have herbs on the skin side). Let the chicken sit there for about 8 minutes, checking constantly that the skin is browning, and not burning. You will see the white, cooked opaqueness move about halfway up.
Flip.
Continue for a few minutes, more, checking the temperature at the center of the breast with a probe thermometer. When it hits 63 degrees, stop cooking. Set chicken aside on the serving plate. Not overcooking is the key.
In the hot fry pan, fry the sliced mushrooms. This time lets the chicken rest a few minutes before cutting into it. The hot and cool parts of the chicken need time to sort themselves out. When done, arrange the mushrooms close to the chicken, and ladle on the sauce.
Yes, 63 deg sounds low, it’s kinda against what Grandma said, but when you cut it open, you see there is just a tinge of pink. And it will be beautiful. It will be juicy, gel like. Tender.
And yummy. Eat.
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