[intro music]
The quality of the ingredients you will use for this recipe
will either make it a great dish or an exceedingly dull one.
Please, please stay away from the packaged boiled ham and
ordinary cheese, but instead go for the first rate ham,
the best Gruyere cheese you can find
and even for the best chicken breast.
Have you ever tried a non-medicated chicken?
It is more expensive, I know, but indulge yourself with it one
time and you will definitely look forward to the next bite.
All of these top-quality ingredients will result in a
mouth-watering dish called cordon bleu.
To make it you will need: non-medicated chicken breast,
cooked ham, Gruyere cheese in slices, Dijon mustard, salt,
pepper, flour, fine bread crumbs, whole egg, vegetable oil.
I'm using canola and butter.
Take a chicken breast, trim the blood vessel.
And here I'm going to remove the tendon of the tenderloin,
just like so.
And this white skin here.
When you leave the tenderloin, the tenderloin is the piece
attached to the breast all along here, okay.
From the thicker part of the breast, cut it in half, okay,
like so, from here.
There we go. Good.
Do the same for the next one.
So trim the excess of fat.
You can see that the fat is yellow,
it's because the chicken has been fed with corn.
So it's a good sign.
Remove the tendon here, same thing.
Put a piece of plastic wrap on your cutting board
then place a piece of the chicken breast over.
Add a little bit of cold water over the chicken breast,
just like so. Just a little bit.
This will help to spread the meat
when we're going to flatten it.
Place a second piece of plastic wrap over the top.
Use the flat side of a meat pounder.
So here I have two styles, a cheap one, maybe eight dollars to
ten bucks maybe in a cookware store and one much heavier
in one piece of metal, about 25 times more expensive
than the other one.
So use what you have, but in any case do not use this part here,
the tenderizer, okay.
You want to have something flat.
So I'm going to be using the Rolls Royce of the meat pounder,
okay, so which will be this one.
And flatten it. [pounding sounds]
So here we have a little bit of blood from the chicken,
so we're going to cut it off.
So peel one of the pieces of the plastic here, just cut it off.
Good. Cover again and feel with your finger.
Touch here. You should feel how even the chicken breast is.
It shouldn't be like this.
It should be flat, okay, even.
So here I can feel that it's thicker on that part,
so I'm going to go back there.
So you want your chicken breast very thin, very flat
and up to 1/16th of an inch, like 2 millimeters,
so a very thin escalope because we're going to use that to wrap
our ham and cheese and so on to make it into a cordon bleu.
This one is done.
Reserve it on the plate and keep it refrigerated.
Now, let's do the second one.
Prepare your mise en place to bread the chicken breast.
So, place the flour in a deep bowl or deep plate.
Here I'm using pasta dishes.
In a separate plate add the breadcrumb.
And in the third one, break the egg.
Season the egg with salt and pepper.
[grinding sounds] salt. Little bit of pepper.
And I like to add a little bit of cold water into my egg,
maybe a tablespoon. This is called an en glaze. Okay.
And beat the egg. [mixing sounds]
Now let me show you what you need
for your mise en place to continue.
You need your chicken breast, flattened. All the pieces.
Your ham and your cheese ready.
Then to bread you will need your flour, your beaten egg,
your breadcrumb, and a little bit of Dijon in a ramekin.
On the working surface, place a chicken breast.
Remove the first layer of plastic wrap gently.
This side is fine.
Brush a little bit of Dijon mustard over.
Don't put too much Dijon mustard
because you don't want to have a strong flavor.
It shouldn't cover the cheese and the ham.
Add a slice of ham and a slice of cheese over the top.
Fold the meat over on each side here using the plastic wrap.
And same thing here and roll, just to enclose the cordon bleu.
And same thing from here. Perfect.
Keep it in the fridge and repeat the operation for all the rest.
Bread the chicken breast, so press down a little bit
on your chicken to make sure it's well-enclosed.
Open it, remove the plastic.
Grab a fork.
Roll it into the flour.
Tap the chicken in order to remove the excess flour.
Put the chicken into the egg and roll it around.
Make sure it's coated with egg all over.
Lift it up.
Let it drain a little bit.
And roll it into the breadcrumb. Good.
Place the chicken breast on a cookie sheet
and repeat the operation for the next one. And the last one.
Clean up your mess.
Keep your chicken breast refrigerated for a good hour
and we will continue.
My cordon bleu has been in the fridge for one hour.
You may bread the cordon bleu in advance, like I did ahead and
keep them in the fridge, if you find your breadcrumb a little
bit moist, then roll the cordon bleu again in dry breadcrumb.
And that will dry out right away and they will be ready to cook.
So, let's cook them.
Heat a skillet on medium high heat.
Add the oil, the butter.
I like to add a knob of butter
because it will give a little more flavor to the cordon bleu.
You may cook them just in butter,
but the butter will have to be clarified,
otherwise you may use oil and butter.
I'm going to cook two cordon bleu and I will freeze the other
two. So you don't want your fat to be very hot because otherwise
you will burn or brown too fast the crumb and you want to have
the heat going through the cheese to melt it.
So cook your cordon bleu on medium heat until they're totally
golden brown all around and then we will bake them.
Cook the cordon bleu for about four to five minutes on each side
or until golden brown, like that. Beautiful.
With a spoon collect the fat and spoon it over the cordon bleu.
There we go.
Cook the cordon bleu for another couple of minutes.
Then bake them at 425 degrees Fahrenheit
for about eight to ten minutes.
Take the pan from the oven. Beautiful. Look at those beauties.
With a tong gently move them to absorbent paper
to absorb the excess fat.
Then plate them.
Then garnish the plate with a little bit of lemon zest.
And I like to have some lemon on my cordon bleu.
So here I'm going to use a zester just to garnish.
Garnish with parsley, a slice of lemon.
That's not a full slice. There we go.
Cut the lemon slice in half, like so.
Remove the seeds if any.
Add your lemon zest around, just to garnish.
Aren't you curious to see the inside? Let's have a look.
Chicken cordon bleu. Bon Appetit.