Cooking Experiment: Chicken Cordon Bleu
Mar. 15th, 2014 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tuftearsNever let it be said I'm not ambitious... I'd wanted a second test for my new sous vide machine, something that wasn't steak, and I thought of chicken-- but how should I cook it?
I saw this chicken cordon bleu recipe and thought it seemed promising... So I set to work.
Reheated some brown rice, sautee'd some carrot sticks, roasted some zucchini sticks...
Ah, but you want to hear about the main dish, don't you! Well. I basically started with two chicken breasts, slit them in half to produce four flat pieces, then rolled them up with some honey smoked barbecue sauce, Black Forest ham and Emmental cheese. Following this, I wrapped them up in plastic wrap and left them in the freezer for a while.
Mistake #1: I didn't flatten the chicken. I figured cutting the chicken in half would be sufficient. Oops! No, no, Tufty, you need to flatten the chicken so that it's MUCH wider, in order to be able to seal in the cheese.
After a suitable chilling period, I removed them, took them out of the wrap and put them into SV bags. I set the SV machine to 146 degrees.
Mistake #2: forgetting that there would be a raid at which my attention would be demanded.
Fortunately, since at this point all I had on was the SV, and the oven preheating in order to roast the zucchini sticks, I just left the SV machine to go, since there're really not any ill effects from letting it cook an extra hour or two, and turned off the oven. Unfortunately, the raid took long enough that the 3-hour timer on the SV machine elapsed and the water cooled off. I had to reheat things again since I was wary of potential bacterial build-up in the intervening time.
Once the chicken was reheated to 146 degrees, I set up three bowls/plates with flour, Eggbeaters, and panko crumbs mixed with parmesan cheese for the breading. I took out the chicken from each bag, one at a time. dredged them in flour, Eggbeaters, and breading, then set them onto a lightly greased baking pan. The bags also had a significant amount of chicken/ham juice. If I had been making a sauce, I'd have saved the liquid for making gravy, but as it stood, I simply disposed of the liquid since I didn't foresee having an immediate use for it.
Mistake #3: finishing the cooking in the oven!
I had opted to try finishing the chicken by baking them in the oven at 400 degrees. That... mostly worked, but the cheese melted out through the sides of the chicken rolls. If I had stretched the chicken properly so they formed a good deal and completely covered the side, the cheese would have stayed in. Instead, the cheese dripped out onto the baking pan and formed a crust. A tasty caramelized crust, mind you, but still not the desired result.
Still, it was actually pretty decent despite my mistakes. One worry I'd had was that the oven cooking would harden the chicken-- that didn't happen, it remained relatively tender and moist.
It was just overall way too much work what with all the wrapping, folding, and dredging in several different things! I need to think of some other ways to try using sous vide and chicken breasts, something that'll be less work. But at least I've done it once now.
I saw this chicken cordon bleu recipe and thought it seemed promising... So I set to work.
Reheated some brown rice, sautee'd some carrot sticks, roasted some zucchini sticks...
Ah, but you want to hear about the main dish, don't you! Well. I basically started with two chicken breasts, slit them in half to produce four flat pieces, then rolled them up with some honey smoked barbecue sauce, Black Forest ham and Emmental cheese. Following this, I wrapped them up in plastic wrap and left them in the freezer for a while.
Mistake #1: I didn't flatten the chicken. I figured cutting the chicken in half would be sufficient. Oops! No, no, Tufty, you need to flatten the chicken so that it's MUCH wider, in order to be able to seal in the cheese.
After a suitable chilling period, I removed them, took them out of the wrap and put them into SV bags. I set the SV machine to 146 degrees.
Mistake #2: forgetting that there would be a raid at which my attention would be demanded.
Fortunately, since at this point all I had on was the SV, and the oven preheating in order to roast the zucchini sticks, I just left the SV machine to go, since there're really not any ill effects from letting it cook an extra hour or two, and turned off the oven. Unfortunately, the raid took long enough that the 3-hour timer on the SV machine elapsed and the water cooled off. I had to reheat things again since I was wary of potential bacterial build-up in the intervening time.
Once the chicken was reheated to 146 degrees, I set up three bowls/plates with flour, Eggbeaters, and panko crumbs mixed with parmesan cheese for the breading. I took out the chicken from each bag, one at a time. dredged them in flour, Eggbeaters, and breading, then set them onto a lightly greased baking pan. The bags also had a significant amount of chicken/ham juice. If I had been making a sauce, I'd have saved the liquid for making gravy, but as it stood, I simply disposed of the liquid since I didn't foresee having an immediate use for it.
Mistake #3: finishing the cooking in the oven!
I had opted to try finishing the chicken by baking them in the oven at 400 degrees. That... mostly worked, but the cheese melted out through the sides of the chicken rolls. If I had stretched the chicken properly so they formed a good deal and completely covered the side, the cheese would have stayed in. Instead, the cheese dripped out onto the baking pan and formed a crust. A tasty caramelized crust, mind you, but still not the desired result.
Still, it was actually pretty decent despite my mistakes. One worry I'd had was that the oven cooking would harden the chicken-- that didn't happen, it remained relatively tender and moist.
It was just overall way too much work what with all the wrapping, folding, and dredging in several different things! I need to think of some other ways to try using sous vide and chicken breasts, something that'll be less work. But at least I've done it once now.
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-16 06:59 am (UTC)I've still not experimented with much chicken. Tonight is the second ever attempt, just to make chicken breasts for salads. I'll let you know how it goes!
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Date: 2014-03-16 06:27 pm (UTC)Hope the chicken goes well!
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