Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

♪ ♪ - Now I have a bone to pick with you and with me, which is that we've forgotten about sauces-- no one makes sauces anymore.

And that's really the basis for so much of French cooking.

So I went to Paris to a place called Le Mouton Blanc, and we did Poulet Vallée d'Auge which is a section of Normandy famous for its apples, and we made this amazing dish that's all about the sauce.

Mushrooms, apples, butter, cream, and then we also used calvados and hard cider.

- (speaking French): - So if you want to up your game in the kitchen, stay with us as we take a fresh look at how to make a classic French sauce.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

♪ ♪ - (speaking French): ♪ ♪ - Is the use of butter less prevalent like, in Provence and southern France, they use more oils?

- (speaking French): - (speaking French): - (speaking French): ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So I'm doing this recipe just for you, because it's time we went back in time to do a classic, French recipe from Normandy.

My prediction is that some of this classic French food, especially Normandy food, is going to come back because it's absolutely delicious.

People have, I think, gotten over their fear of using cream and butter, and it's just great food-- but I found this recipe at Le Mouton Blanc in Paris.

It's cream, it's chicken, it's mushrooms, it's calvados, it's hard cider, lots of apples.

So let's get started.

We have bone-in, skin-on thighs.

One good thing about thighs is you really can't overcook them.

So the breast, you have to kind of get just right.

We are going to brown these just skin-side down.

We'll do it in two batches 'cause there's too much for this pot.

You know, one of the great things about spending time in French bistros and cafes, etcetera, is unlike Rome, where things don't change too much, you can go into a French restaurant, you get a mix of traditional French meals and things that are more interesting.

One of the places I went actually did a steak au poivre and did it with a mushroom.

So there was no steak, it was just a big portobello.

And he made that wonderful pepper with that brown sauce.

So you never quite know what you're going to get.

It's almost like in Paris.

People are quite happy mixing and matching.

Chicken skin... ...is going to stick... ...to the pan, there's nothing you can do about it.

If you let it sit long enough, it's going to release.

But if I went here now... ...and picked it up like this, it's sticking.

So you have to give it a little time, and it will release.

The problem with me is I'm impatient.

So everyone always says, just wait, relax, cool it, do the Zen thing, whatever that is.

♪ ♪ I'm just gonna pour off the extra fat.

Anytime you ask a French cook, including Jacques or anybody else over there, it's always Golden Delicious.

That's the apple they use, and I think it must be because that's what grows there.

I think Golden Delicious are not tart enough, and I don't love their texture.

Basically, I really don't like them that much.

If you can find a Rhode Island Greening, something like that, that has a little bit more savoriness to it, a little bite to it, I think that would be great.

But especially in the fall, when you can actually find some heirloom apples locally, I would definitely go for that.

So we're just cooking them for two or three minutes.

We want to have them retain their texture.

Just a little flavor and browning.

Okay.

So they're lightly sautéed, still maintain texture.

Smells good-- next up, more butter.

Now, the advantage to this is you're going to do a little bit more work than you might for chicken dinner, but it's actually not that hard to do, and then all of a sudden, instead of, "What's for dinner?"

"A roast chicken."

"What's for dinner?"

"Poulet Vallée d'Auge" Now, which sounds better?

Okay, it's a little more work, but it's not that much more work.

Okay, just another 30 seconds here.

They're squeaking, which is always a good sign.

Calvados-- by the way, we did do a test with flambé recently here, and overall, we did actually find that the flambé actually did add a little flavor to it.

Now, hard cider-- this is not regular sweet cider.

You know, I bet some of you are watching me make this, going like, "I'm gonna make the recipe, but just not add the cream at the end," right?

'Cause it'll be healthier.

You can do that if you want.

I just find the cream at the end, I think it really does add something but I know some of you were thinking that.

Pretty good to go here.

So one of the things we found, which is kind of interesting, is the heat of the oven is actually gonna brown the meat.

So if you're doing a beef stew, for example, you can cook it for a couple hours, take the cover off, cook another hour, hour and 15 minutes, and the top will actually get brown, so.

This goes into a hot oven, 425, for 20, 25 minutes.

'Cause the thighs are already partially cooked.

Now, as I promised, since the top was off, you can see the tops got really nicely browned.

So this is just a great generic tip.

Browning meat or chicken, whatever.

Leave the top off, and you're going to get a lot of browning.

Chicken goes out, the apples go in.

And the cream-- please, don't leave this out, okay?

I know you're thinking that-- just put it in.

Makes a lot of difference, looks better, too.

And we're going to just cook this gently to reduce things down a little bit, make it a little saucier.

The apples still have texture to them, which is great.

Just gonna use my fingers, sorry.

Two for me.

I mean, let's really go for it here.

Come on, that, that looks pretty good, right, I mean, come on.

Mm.

You know, roast, or baked chicken thighs, a little bit of extra on it.

Transform it from sort of an ugly duckling to this magnificent meal.

And the apples, it's hard for you to tell, but they really maintain their texture, which is nice.

They're not all limp.

You heard it here first.

Some of this classic French cooking is absolutely coming back.

I mean, these are recipes that are timeless and are great in the 21st century as they were in the 19th century.

And it also teaches you a lot about classic French cooking techniques, by the way, you can use in your kitchen every day.

♪ ♪ - You just saw Chris braise beautiful bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces, and next he's gonna roast a whole gorgeous chicken.

He left me with boneless, skinless chicken breast.

Leave it to Chris.

However, boneless, skinless chicken breasts can be delicious, and I'm gonna show you how by using a marinade-- I know that sounds surprising-- we don't like marinades at Milk Street.

But a yogurt marinade works.

So, most marinades are really a waste of ingredients.

They're either too acidic and so they make your meat mushy, or the flavor that you're adding and spending all this time putting into the marinade doesn't ever get into the meat.

And so it's a waste of food and time.

However, lactic acid is a more mild acid, and so it will gently break down the proteins to create a really nice texture without the meat getting mushy.

And then there's also calcium, and the calcium is also gonna help with the texture of the meat.

We're also gonna add some spices to our marinade, which helps with its efficacy.

So here we're adding garam masala, paprika and turmeric.

The garam masala is a warming spice mix from India.

And we're really adding it for all the flavor.

The paprika has flavor, of course, but also this gorgeous brick red color.

The turmeric, again, has some flavor, but it's that sunny, yellow color that we're looking for, so that our chicken's beautiful.

'Cause you eat with your eyes as much as with your palate.

Here's some ginger.

We're gonna grate it in.

We're also gonna add garlic.

Like all marinades, the flavor's not getting in the meat, but because there's fat and it's going to caramelize in the oven, it's going to cling.

So we can add all the flavor that you add into a regular marinade, and we're still gonna taste it, as opposed to washing it down the drain.

So for this recipe, we were inspired by tandoor chicken from India.

And that's where these flavors are coming from.

But really, the idea of using dairy as a marinade for meat, you find it around the world.

You might find it in Ukraine, where they're using dairy to marinate chicken.

Or if you grew up eating buttermilk-fried chicken, like I did from my mom in Kansas, then you're very familiar with using dairy to get those tender results that we're going to get today.

Okay, we're also gonna add a little salt and pepper.

We're gonna serve this with additional plain yogurt at the end.

But if you really like the flavor, you can reserve a little right now to serve at the end.

You just want to make sure you do that before you add the raw chicken.

You also want to do that before you add the oil so that the yogurt at the end is really tangy and bright, and a nice counterpoint to this charred chicken that we're about to make.

So this can be any cut of chicken.

It could be chicken thighs.

It could be whole pieces with skin on.

But we wanted to find a way to get boneless, skinless chicken breasts that tasted amazing.

And this is it.

The last note to say about the marinade is time.

So we did a lot of development on this recipe to see how long you could go for, what's the longest-- minimum of 20 minutes when you're using boneless, skinless chicken.

However, we really found the most benefit with four hours, and up to 24.

After that, the chicken gets a little mushy.

But so four hours can sound a little daunting because ooh, who's making dinner four hours before you want to eat it?

But you could do this the morning before.

You could even do it the evening before.

So I really like that it's a 24-hour window.

It means that when I get home, I skewer the chicken.

Dinner's ready in ten minutes.

Let's talk about the oven before we get to the skewers.

So, like I said, we're inspired by tandoor chicken, which you've probably eaten out.

It's delicious chicken that's got those caramelized and dark charred bits on it.

That's from the intensely high heat of a tandoor oven-- how we're gonna get that result at home is by using our broiler on high and the rack only four inches away.

And yes, skewering chicken is not the most pleasant task, but what it means is that you can flip it easily so we can get a char on both sides-- you're more than welcome to just spread it over the rack, which, let's be honest, I do that most of the time, 'cause this is a little bit laborious for a Tuesday night, but then you do need to get a pair of tongs so that you can flip each piece to get the right amount of char on all sides of the chicken.

So if you get a piece of chicken that's really thin, you can fold it in half so that it cooks at the same rate as the rest of the chicken.

Because while a yogurt marinade is magical and will make your meat more moist, it can't fix every problem.

And a thin piece of chicken will dry out.

♪ ♪ Before I put the chicken in the oven, I'm gonna go wash my hands, I'll be right back.

All right, now they're ready to broil.

You want to broil them until they're deeply charred on one side, which is five or six minutes.

So you see that char?

That's exactly what we're looking for.

That's flavor, so I'm just gonna flip these over and let them char on the other side, which will take another five to six minutes.

♪ ♪ Beautiful.

Okay, these are gorgeous, you can see the charring on them, the yogurt sticking to them, which means we've got a lot of flavor and great texture.

Now, I have just fresh plain yogurt.

But remember, you could have saved a little of your marinade pre-chicken if you wanted to.

Some sliced red onions, and of course, some beautiful naan.

So remember, your skewers are hot, so you want to use a towel or a second pair of tongs and then slide them off.

So you can make a little sandwich, which I actually think is the best way to eat them, so that's what I'm gonna do.

You can also dress the plate.

♪ ♪ Oh, must-have-- a final little burst of citrus.

Fixes everything.

And let's see how it tastes.

So one of the things I love about working at Milk Street is that we're always learning.

We're always changing our minds.

I thought marinades didn't work.

I thought chicken breast was always dry and flavorless.

Here I have flavorful, moist chicken breast, and that's all thanks to a yogurt marinade.

♪ ♪ - Today, we're going to talk about one of my favorite foods, fried chicken.

Everybody loves fried chicken, but we don't cook it inside.

It's just a bloody mess, it spatters everywhere.

It smokes up the kitchen, gets on the floor.

I'm going to show you that you can make the best fried chicken you've ever tasted on your backyard grill, especially if you've got a good gas grill.

And it's just awesome stuff.

So the first thing I want to do is show you some basics about the chicken wing.

We cut right at this joint here, and then we cut right at this joint, and now we have three parts.

I've got some drumsticks, and I've got drumettes and some flats.

Now, they're different, aren't they?

You can see, these are yellow.

What you do is, is you want to bread the chicken.

So you start by rolling it in flour.

And that's what I've done with the flats.

And that's all-- just rolled them in flour.

And that's all you need to do.

Now you can get fancy, you can go from the flour into egg and back into the flour for a thicker, crunchier coat.

Now, the reason this has turned yellow is because after I dredge them, I put them in the fridge for about a half-hour to an hour.

And that's to hydrate the flour because we want the flour moist.

Okay, now over here, we have a good old Dutch oven sitting on top of the gas grills.

And we want to shoot for 375.

Let's start frying some chicken.

And you can see them bubbling away like crazy.

And that's because that's water evaporating.

It's coming out of the meat.

The water is steaming.

And this is going to take about ten, 15 minutes, and you might want to roll them around a little bit.

These guys have cooled off a bit, and you can really see the difference.

Take a look at this-- this is the drumette, and it's got a really nice, deep, rich coat.

I got to take a bite of this.

Tender, juicy.

This is one of the flats, and it just was rolled in flour.

It's so much better than carry-out from the local chicken joint.

And it's right here in your backyard.

Fresh, hot.

You got to try this.

♪ ♪ - Okay, everybody is wrong about how to roast a chicken, and I was wrong for, for decades as well.

They're going to say, trust the bird, right?

You're going to cross the legs and tie them up.

Not a great idea, it's not a great idea because why?

Well, because it makes it harder for the heat to get in, especially with a dark meat, right?

You know, everybody can be wrong.

Actually, it used to be in our family, my sister and I, who is four years younger than I am, and we used to have a saying about our mother, her motto, which we never told her to her face, was "Always wrong, but never in doubt."

Which I've adopted as my basic (chuckling): motto in the kitchen.

So, this is one of those cases where I was trussing birds, but then I noticed something odd.

And here's what I noticed-- I noticed the dark meat wasn't really getting cooked... ...enough.

So you can see in here, there's a lot of connective tissue, like, there are tendons in here, you can see them.

You get these gnarly little pieces.

And so what you have is really not fully cooked dark meat.

Now, we've all lived through that for decades.

The problem is you gotta think about dark meat like you're roasting a pig.

Like, every August, I used to roast an 80-pound pig.

If you're doing any kind of barbecue, you're gonna cook the meat to 195 or 200.

Why do you do that?

Because the connective tissues, the tendons, the other things, they need to melt, right?

And as they melt, they kind of lubricate the meat, and you get really nicely cooked meat.

So, our goal is to start by separating the white meat and the dark meat.

The first thing we're gonna do is spatchcock this, which is to take off the backbone.

Voila, backbone's out.

Okay, so now what we want to do is take off the legs.

I'm going to press this back and I'm going to find the joint.

So I find the tips sometimes will burn.

So I'll just get rid of the tips.

So now you have the whole breast.

Normally, if we're doing a turkey, we'll salt it overnight in the refrigerator.

You know, with a chicken, I'm just going to rub some salt and pepper on it.

So I'm going to let this sit for an hour or so.

That'll help, it's sort of the beginning of a brine.

I find that'll make a slightly juicier chicken if you do that.

So it's only been sitting an hour, but you can see the skin is starting to thin out a little bit, which is nice.

I always put a little oil.

I find that helps with the browning of the skin.

So, 425 oven, and we're going to roast it until the breast is about 160, 165.

It depends-- 45, 50 minutes, something like that.

And then we'll keep the legs in longer to get up to 195 to 200-- you know, it's almost impossible to overcook dark meat, actually.

It's easy to overcook white meat.

So if you left it into 205, it just wouldn't make any difference at all.

So 425 until the breast meat's done.

It's cooked, it's cooled just a little bit.

So I can handle it.

But the first thing we're gonna do is remove the wings-- now, the wings, actually, you have to cut in a little deeper than you think you might.

So now it's easy to carve the breast, so, the breastbone's obviously in the middle.

So just on one side... ...we'll cut down.

I'm normally going to separate the thigh from the leg.

Usually... where you cut is a little farther down the leg than you might think, but that's it.

You get a clean cut in between the joint.

Let's slice... one of these breasts.

By the way, one of my favorite stories about Julia, she was at her little cottage, which was on the grounds of Simone Beck's home in France.

And they would invite people over to their dinner parties.

Well, Richard Olney, the very famous cookbook author, was there, expert on French food.

James Beard was there, a few other people.

Julia's job was to roast the chicken.

And she took it out of the oven and it was undercooked.

So it just made me feel good that even Julia Child could sometimes undercook a chicken.

She, when I first moved to Boston in '91, that year, she called me.

And I, you know, I thought it was a joke, of course, but it was Julia, and, uh, she called me and said, you know, "Why don't you come over for dinner?"

And she liked to know if you could cook, so she'd always test you out.

I remember one time I went over, there was a leg of lamb.

And leg of lamb's a little tricky, because you have to know where the bones are.

And she said, (imitating Julia Child): "Why don't you carve it?"

So I actually did.

To her surprise, I think.

Finally, we're down to the dark meat.

This is fully cooked.

There's no gnarly little pieces in here.

All those ligaments... ...are fully cooked.

Boy, is this good.

The secret to... ...perfectly cooked chicken, it seems to me, roast chicken, is treating the white meat and dark meat separately, separating them when you roast them and then leaving the legs in longer if they need to be left in longer.

But get that dark meat up to 195 to 200.

Breast around 165.

We're changing the way you think about roasting chicken-- you separate the breast from the legs, and then you roast it in a 425 oven.

The breast comes out at 165.

The dark meat may be cooked by then, but if not, get it to 195 to 200 or even higher.

I actually like it about 205.

And then you'll have perfectly cooked chicken.

And the next time James Beard, Julia Child and Richard Olney get together in heaven, they might invite you and you can roast the chicken.

So for this recipe, and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, please go to MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes and our tips and techniques library.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The season ten Milk Street Cookbook is now available, and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From Brazilian cheese puffs and French toast, to skillet lasagna and Japanese cheesecake, the new Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of The Milk Street Cookbook for $34.95-- 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

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