What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Well it doesn't really matter
because we're talking about chicken.
(rubber chicken honking)
Winner winner, chicken dinner.
Yes!
On this episode of So Basic,
I'll be showing you an easy chicken dinner
plus a side of creamy, dreamy mashed potatoes
all made in just one skillet,
plus a quick chimichurri topper.
Spicy!
Plus I'll be answering some of your most burning
cooking questions and reading your comments
while making a really easy but basic chicken dinner
because sometimes being basic isn't that bad.
(upbeat music)
Mm, yummy.
Alright so let's get started on our basic chicken dinner.
Just so we're basically gonna make chicken
and mashed potatoes in just one dish.
So what you're gonna do is grab your biggest cast iron pan
that you have, turn it on and let's get our oil heated up.
So I'm gonna use chicken breasts
but you could use chicken thighs,
you could use the whole chicken and cut it into quarters
if you wanted to but I wanted to use chicken breasts
'cause that's what you guys commented
that you said that you like to use at home
and I'm making this dish for you guys.
Another question that a lot of people had
was how to season chicken and what's the right amount
of salt and pepper for chicken?
What I like to do is grab a teaspoon like this
and I just use one full teaspoon
per piece of chicken breast.
So half of it on the top,
flip it over and do the other half.
We're gonna do that with all four chickens.
So on YouTube, we asked what you guys
what your biggest problem with cooking chicken is.
So I'm gonna go through and read some of your comments now
and try to answer some of your questions.
I'll at least try.
Elissa commented and said, it's either undercooked or dry
and I'm always nervous about knowing the difference
between raw and moist.
Elissa, I have the same problem at home,
you just want to stick a thermometer in the chicken
and make sure it's 165 degrees.
If it goes above that, then it might be a little dry
and if it goes below that, then it's not cooked all the way.
So just make sure you get it to 165 degrees
and it'll be juicy and moist every single time.
Our next comment is from Aaron Williams.
Aaron said, I picked too dry because chicken breast
is always hard to keep moist unless I marinate it
in buttermilk and fry it.
But chicken thighs are naturally really moist
so if I need a moister piece of chicken,
I'll usually reach for a thigh.
Whoa, Arron, careful where you're reachin.'
But you're right, thighs are always much more moist.
I love chicken thighs because honestly,
you can like overcook them
and they're still pretty moist and juicy.
And you can actually make this recipe
that we're making today with chicken thighs
so if you like those better,
you can just swap out the breasts for chicken thighs.
Erol Baft commented that his biggest problem with chicken
is eating it alone while watching YouTube.
Well you're not alone today Erol
because we're all making chicken together.
Let's continue, shall we?
Alright, now once we get our pan nice and hot,
we want to sear our chicken,
and we want to get like a nice caramelization on it.
So you want to make sure your pan is nice and hot
before you add the chicken into it.
And the way you know that's happening
is once you see the oil kind of start to ripple.
And now we're gonna nestle our chickens down into there
and start searing them up.
And you should hear a nice sound like that
when it goes into the pan.
Get 'em nice and cooped up, 'cause it's chicken.
(cymbal clanging)
Alright, so while these chicken breasts start to sear,
they're gonna take a few minutes per side.
We're gonna start peeling our potatoes.
Now I'm gonna go through YouTube comments
and read some of your questions and comments
about potatoes.
Rhonda Knox commented and said,
I've underestimated the amount of potatoes
to cook for the portion size needed.
Then I worry throughout the meal
that people are having to skimp on their portion.
Whenever you cook potatoes,
I always like to say one potato per person.
So if you're cooking for eight people, cook eight potatoes.
That's math.
Nick Chase commented and said, bland.
Is the solution more salt in potato cooking water
like pasta or maybe some other additives like Parmesan?
Nick, you're totally right.
You definitely want to season your potato water
whenever you make mashed potatoes.
You want to use a lot of salt,
probably more than you think that you need
because that's the only time the potatoes
are gonna soak up that salty flavor.
And then if you are gonna add some additives like Parmesan,
you want to do that after the fact.
Parmesan potatoes, that sounds good.
Roxy Person commented and said,
I feel like I've got it down and my family likes it too.
I leave chunks in it because we like it that way.
You know what Roxy, I like potatoes chunky too
so we're gonna make a chunky mash today.
Let's do it!
So I have four Russet potatoes here,
it's about three pounds of potato.
We're just gonna peel these guys up.
Alright, let's check on our chicken.
It might be time to flip it.
Another thing you guys commented that happens a lot
is that you said that your chicken always sticks to the pan.
In order for it to not stick to the pan,
you just want to lay your chicken in the pan
and just kind of let it hang out,
like let it chill out a little bit.
If you move it around too much,
it has a tendency to stick to the pan.
And if you go to lift your chicken
and it is sticking, this one's kind of sticking,
that means it's not ready to me moved.
So we're just gonna let it keep chilling out
and we're gonna keep peeling our potatoes.
Now these potatoes aren't just regular mashed potatoes.
Obviously they're a little different
'cause we're gonna make them in pan
but I'm also gonna flavor them with a little bit of garlic
and some bay and some time,
and that way they're just kind of like a nice,
fun, flavorful mashed potato.
And the best part about the garlic
is we don't even have to chop it or anything,
we're just gonna throw it in whole
'cause it's gonna cook with the mashed potatoes.
And then when they're done cooking,
we just kind of mash it all up together.
No, don't get a picture of that one,
it looks weird!
Our chicken should be ready to flip.
Yup, there we go.
See, it's coming off the pan pretty easily
then we just flip them over.
So the nice, little tan chicken breast.
It looks like they just went on a vacation.
So now to cut our potatoes,
we want to make sure they're all kind of a uniform size
'cause that way they cook really evenly.
So for this recipe, all we're gonna do
is cut them in half, cut them in half again
and then just cut them into about one inch chunks
and that way they're nice and uniform size,
they'll cook evenly and they'll make delicious,
super creamy mashed potato when we're done.
Alright, so now that we have our potatoes all chopped up,
our chicken is nice and brown,
I'm gonna take the chicken out of the pan
and remove it to a plate
and then we're gonna add in our potatoes.
Now obviously this chicken isn't done cooking
but it's gonna cook in the oven with the potatoes
so they all kind of finish cooking together
and they all kind of flavor each other too,
which is kind of fun.
So this pan is nice and hot,
I'm gonna add a little bit more oil
and I'm gonna crush some garlic and add that to the pan too.
I have four cloves of garlic and I'm just gonna mash 'em,
take their skins off, throw 'em in the pan.
Super easy.
Go play with your friends.
There we go, so we have our garlic in the pan,
gonna add in our potatoes.
Want to keep 'em in a nice, even layer.
Three sprigs of thyme, we're not gonna chop those either,
we're just gonna throw 'em in
and a little bit of bay.
Here you go, bay.
Just gonna shake that around a little bit,
make sure our potatoes don't stick.
We're gonna use a little bit of chicken stock today.
Gonna use about a cup and a half of chicken stock.
A lot of the times when I cook,
I do like to eyeball it but for this specific recipe,
since we're cooking with potatoes in actual liquid
that they're gonna be served in,
you want to make sure you're measuring.
So cup and a half of chicken stock, there we go.
And now we're going to add in a teaspoon and a half
of salt, we got a little salt on my bay.
There you go, bay.
Not that bae, this bay.
Fresh bay.
You can also use dried bay, which is not, you know,
your bae.
You don't want to put him in the pan, or her.
Now we're gonna top this with our seared chicken breast
and then we're gonna throw all of this into the oven
at 400 degrees.
We're gonna cook it for about 25 minutes
and when it comes out, you guys will see
how beautiful this chicken looks
and a nice, creamy mashed potatoes
that we're gonna turn those potatoes into.
Let me throw this in the oven
and then we'll start working on our sauce
that we're gonna top it with.
I didn't open the oven.
Alright, and so while that cooks up,
we're gonna get started on the sauce.
(upbeat music)
I wanted to make a fun, little topper for this chicken,
something that was relatively easy
but also super flavorful.
For me, chicken is kind of like a vehicle
to have other flavors, like Buffalo chicken
or barbecue chicken.
So today we're just going to make this nice,
oven baked chicken but we're gonna top it off
with this chimichurri sauce.
And I believe it's Spanish for mm, yummy!
I don't know what it stands for but I think it's delicious
and it's really easy to make.
And basically what you,
you just want to get a bunch of herbs.
We have some cilantro, we have some parsley,
I'm using a little bit of mint today.
But you want two cups of herbs, total
and you can use any herbs that you like.
To this we're also going to add one clove of garlic.
I like to grate it when you put it in here.
Oops, I lost my garlic, come back.
We're gonna add a little bit of crushed red pepper flake
for some heat.
A little bit of dried oregano.
Chimichurri is like a vinegary-based sauce.
We're gonna use a red wine vinegar today
'cause I sort of like that tang
because it's really yummy.
About a third of a cup of that goes in
and of course a little bit of salt.
I'm also going to add in one shallot.
And I'm just gonna chunk this up.
You don't have to be, you know, super proper about it
because it is going into the food processor.
Just throw that in.
Whenever you pulse something,
you want to use, obviously, the pulse button
and you just want to press it for a few seconds.
And then another important step
is you always want to scrape down the sides.
There we go.
Ooh, it already smells really yummy.
This is a fun sauce to make, you know, any night of the week
and you can use it as a topper for anything.
You can make it into salad dressing,
you can do a lot of stuff with this.
Alright, so we have our herbs roughly chopped
with out vinegar and our shallot.
And I'm gonna add that to a bowl, there we go.
That was so quick and easy and super fun.
I had fun anyway, did you?
All of our herbs are in.
And now, you could of course just add your serrano
or jalapeno pepper to the food processor
but I like to give it a nice thin slice
'cause I just think it looks nice and pretty on top.
When people see something thinly sliced,
they look at it and they're look, ooh, this person cares.
They made something really special and I care.
I care about you, YouTube viewers, thank you for watching.
Alright, so let's add in our spiced serranos.
Look how pretty and green that is, that's so festive.
Alright, last step is we're gonna top it all off
with some oil.
Now the reason I love this sauce too
is because you make it in a bowl
and you just leave it like this
and then we top it off with the oil
and this can just like sit out
at room temperature for a while
or you just throw it into the fridge
and you can use if for a topper for pretty much anything.
We want about two thirds of a cup of olive oil,
which I know sounds like a lot
but we're making a lot of sauce here.
This will last at least one dinner,
if not two or three.
And now we just pour our olive oil right over top
and you just let that hang out
until you're ready to eat dinner.
Alright so our chicken's been in the oven
for about 25 minutes,
I think it's ready to pull out so let's check it out.
Check that out, we have this beautiful brown chicken
on top, the potatoes got nice and soft on the bottom
so we're gonna mash those up.
So we're gonna move our chicken over here,
we're just gonna let that hang out
and rest for a little bit.
Ah!
Whenever you're cooking any kind of meat,
you definitely want it to rest for a little bit,
just to keep all those juices in there.
Otherwise, if you cut it while it's hot,
all the juices will run out
and you'll have dry chicken.
And we worked so hard to make this beautiful,
moist chicken so we don't want to do that.
We're gonna let that hang out for a little bit
and we're gonna turn these potatoes
that we roasted in the oven into mashed potatoes.
Gonna grab our masher, oh, we need to discard
both the bay, thank you for coming but your time is over,
and our thyme, thank you for participating,
you'll get your trophy in the mail.
Now we're gonna use our masher
and we're just gonna start mashing up our potatoes
and you kind of have to work 'em.
And once you start mashing 'em up,
you'll see that they start mixing with the broth,
that chicken stock that we put in there,
and they'll get nice and creamy.
This is a mistake that I always make
whenever I make this dish
is I have this hot pan
and I want to grab it (alarm sounding)
and you'll burn your hands (alarm sounding)
if you do that (alarm sounding)
so put a little towel on there.
We're just gonna mash up our taters.
You can definitely smell all those herbs.
You can definitely smell the garlic in there,
these are gonna be yummy, yummy mashed potatoes
and we made it all in just one skillet.
And the best part, it's quite a workout,
definitely feel my triceps at work right now,
I'm getting a little facial from the potato steam.
Alright, so once we have out potatoes
to a nice consistency like this,
we're ready to fold in the rest of your ingredients.
Ooh!
I need to make a margarita or something.
This is the fun part.
Look how creamy those are gonna be.
These potatoes to me are just like a perfect mixture
of creamy and like slightly rustic.
We're gonna add in about a third a cup of half and half.
We're gonna start out with a third a cup.
If it looks a little thick,
we'll just add in a little bit more.
So put that in there.
And then I also have some butter.
This is half a stick of butter,
I just cubed it up a little bit
and we're just gonna mix that in so it gets nice and smooth.
We'll let it melt down a little bit.
Look how yummy those look.
Potatoes are just one of the best, in my opinion,
one of the best foods ever.
It's so delicious.
And whoever thought to eat a potato for the first time
is a genius.
And you just keep mixin' 'em up
until all your butter melts
and try not to get hypnotized by the potatoes,
it's very easy to.
Think all of our butter is nice and melted,
I'm gonna give these a taste just to make sure
they taste good.
They're so yummy.
I love these potatoes 'cause sine they're made
with chicken stock and we have the chicken on top,
they sort of have that like yummy chickeny flavor
which I love, they're so good.
Alright, let's slice up a piece of chicken breast
and then we can start plating.
I'm gonna grab the biggest one 'cause I'm hungry.
We're just gonna give it a a little slice.
And since it's nice and rested, you'll see how juicy it is.
Still a little hot so I'm gonna use my tongs
to help me out a little bit.
I like to start off with a big pile of mashed potatoes
right in the middle of the plate.
Look at that.
Yum!
Spread 'em out a tiny bit
and I'm just gonna put our chicken right over the top,
just kind of shingle it on top.
And I like to shingle it like this
'cause then we're gonna add our chimichurri on top
so then the chimichurri just kind of soaks down
into all the chicken and the potatoes.
I cannot wait to eat this.
And plate that up, look how pretty that is.
Just gonna grab some of this oil,
spread it on top a little bit.
Look at that.
So here we have our one skillet chicken and mashed potatoes.
On the bottom of this plate, we have our mashed potatoes.
If you remember, all we did was just cook
some Russet potatoes in a little it of chicken stock.
We added in some garlic, some thyme, some bay
and once we took it out of the oven,
we mashed it up and added in some butter
and some half and half.
Right on top of that we just have a very simple
seared and then roasted chicken
and just to punch up all that flavor,
we made a little chimichurri with all of those herbs,
the vinegar and that spicy serrano.
This is, in my opinion, a dream dish
and it only took us about a half an hour to make.
Should I try it?
I'm just gonna put it all together.
Some mashed potatoes,
some chicken with that chimichurri on top.
Mm!
Oh my God, that's so good.
The chicken is so juicy and it's delicious.
I'm just gonna eat this.
Our last comment today is from Khairomi
who said, Grant, it's personal.
Grant, I think you're fine as heck
but you look a little orange, baby.
Do I look orange?
I don't know.
Comment below and let me know
if you think I look orange or not.
But he also said, I still love and adore you.
Aw thanks, Khairomi, I love and adore you too.
Thanks for watching, we'll see you guys next time, bye!
It spins.
You didn't know it spun.
It was a secret the whole time.
It spins longer than you think it's gonna spin.
(upbeat music)
Mm, yummy.
Hey if you guys make this dish at home,
grab our camera phone and take a photo, we'd love to see it
and make sure you share it with us, #grantsobasic.