- Chicken Parmesan.
It is a delicious trinity of sauce, crispy chicken,
and of course, lots of melty cheese.
Italian-American classic.
I'm gonna show you how to make it here today.
Right now. Like immediately.
(upbeat music)
When you think about chicken parm
you think about that amazing red sauce.
So let's start there.
We're gonna start with one medium onion small diced.
Run your knife parallel to the cutting board.
I take the back of my knife
and I run the knife straight through,
and run my knife straight down,
and you get a nice small dice very quickly.
How red do my eyes look?
No matter how many times I've chopped onions
I cry every time. (Nyesha laughs)
So I'm gonna place them in my little bowl here
off to the side, way far away from me.
Celery. (knife chops)
We want to cut these down into manageable pieces.
I'm ultimately looking for a small dice
on all of the mirepoix,
and that's going to allow the mirepoix to cook evenly.
I dare anyone to come down and measure my small dice.
This is very on-point.
For the last step of the mirepoix
I actually like to use a mandolin to get these planks,
about a quarter of an inch,
and then I'll make matchsticks
and run my knife through to create a small dice.
Join the party! (imitates landing sound)
Happy vegetables make happy sauce.
The vegetables told me that.
I'm gonna use five cloves of garlic.
I like to just give it a quick smash.
And this is all gonna go through the food mill. Garlic done!
The big reveal of the pot.
Like all delicious things,
we are starting with the aromatics, right?
It's all about layering and building flavor.
I like to start with a neutral oil.
Today I'm using grapeseed, call it two tablespoons or so.
And this mirepoix here is going to start to sweat.
This is literally one of my favorite smells.
I wish there was a mirepoix candle burning at all times.
Such a beautiful smell.
Half a teaspoon or so of kosher salt
is going to help coax those flavors
and help these vegetables sweat.
You wanna saute or sweat this mirepoix
for about 20 minutes.
And we do not want this to have too much color.
I really just want the essence of the carrot,
I want the essence of the onion,
and the essence of that celery to really shine.
I add my garlic towards the last part of cooking
in our aromatics just because I don't want the garlic
to caramelize too much.
And I wanna retain a bit of that fresh garlic flavor.
(spoon clanging)
Now that we have our mirepoix and garlic sauteed,
I will roast the tomato paste.
This is a very important step.
Just scoot your mirepoix to the side.
I'm gonna add about two tablespoons of tomato paste
into the oil that's already in the pan.
What happens is the tomato paste
really starts to flavor that oil
and it'll actually take on this beautiful deep orangy hue.
Tomato paste loves to be roasted very low and slow.
This step should take a good three minutes, four minutes.
So once this tomato paste has roasted
in the same pot off on its own,
we're going to start to fold these ingredients together.
Every step of the sauce is getting equal love, right?
It's very important to not rush this step, right?
Sauce making is a beautiful art form.
- [Producer] Someone loves sauce!
- Oh my God, it's my sh**.
Oh yeah. (gentle music)
Yum!
Okay, so for my next step what I like to do
is add a de glaze, essentially,
all this beautiful flavor that we created in this pot,
I wanna capture all of that and flavor our tomatoes.
I love to de glaze with a nice, beautiful robust white wine.
You don't wanna use anything too sweet.
Today I'm using sauvignon blanc
and I'm going to add about a quarter cup to my sauce base.
Oh my gosh. It smells amazing in here.
Get in there, smell-o-vision. (choir singing)
I'm going to add just a touch of salt
to keep all of these flavors on the right track, right?
We wanna always layer in the flavor.
Sauce base is looking awesome.
At this point, I like to add my tomatoes.
We're gonna use a diced tomato for the sauce.
I love using San Marzano tomatoes.
They have an amazing tang to them.
(can clattering)
(Nyesha laughs)
We're gonna use two cans of diced tomatoes today.
I see a good amount of flavor still left in here
and we cannot allow that to go to waste.
And my mom might've used water
to rinse out the can and pour it in,
I'm actually gonna put in a little white wine.
Another flavor opportunity.
A couple tablespoons will do it. Yes!
We want to add in our second layer of aromatics, right?
We have aromatics coming from the base,
coming from that mirepoix,
now we want a top layer of more aromatics coming from herbs.
Herbs like thyme, basil. It's gonna impart a ton of flavor.
I'm also gonna add a little bit of black pepper.
Love black pepper.
Let's call it two bay leaves.
I like to tie my herbs in a small bundle
just to make it easy to fish them out after.
So I take a little bit of butcher's twine,
wrap it around, and here's the trick, tie it to your pot.
What I want to do is add some tomato puree. About 12 ounces.
Just to give it some viscosity, some body,
and lots of flavor.
I wanna bring this up to a pretty solid simmer
and then reduced to a very low heat,
just to allow all of those flavors to marry and become one.
So we're going to cover
and allow this to cook for about 35 minutes.
Sauce is cooked
and we are ready to food mill our amazing creation.
I'm going to discard my sachet of herbs
because I've already pulled all the flavor out of the herbs.
So I like to work in small batches
when food milling our tomato sauce.
So I'll just take it a little bit by a little bit,
call it a cup or so at a time, and just work into a pot.
Here's the deal, right?
A blender's going to give you too much
of an emulsified mouthfeel.
We want there to be enough texture from the vegetables
and from the tomatoes to give us this beautiful body
in the sauce.
If you do not have a food mill you can use a hand blender.
For me, a food mill is best.
You get the perfect amount of the vegetables in there,
along with tomatoes.
It just gives it amazing texture.
Our tomato sauce has been passed through the food mill.
Wanna give this a little taste.
Absolutely phenomenal.
You can taste all of the aromatics.
Really comes through lovely.
Just gonna add a pinch of salt
and now we can place this over a low heat
just to continue cooking.
Texture is key in chicken parm, right?
So how do we get the texture?
Crispy, delicious breadcrumbs!
I like to make my own breadcrumbs, you don't have to.
We're just going to simply hand tear this bread.
This is a serious technique here.
It's like you rip it.
You can totally leave these out overnight
or you can toast them, right?
We're just trying to dry the bread out.
You want about 16 ounces for two chicken parm.
We're going to bake this at 350 degrees
for about 10 minutes.
Awesome! Bread has toasted, not a lot of color, simply dry.
They've been cooled.
Now I'm just gonna pulse them down
to create the bread crumbs.
(blender pulsing)
Separate the larger pieces of the dried bread
and then re-pulse them down.
(blender pulsing)
You don't want something that's too fine
because essentially what's gonna happen
is it'll create a batter.
We want larger pieces of breadcrumb
so that's why I sift it out
and it'll give us some beautiful texture.
whole chicken breakdown is one of my favorite things to do.
And this is about a five pound bird
which generally will feed about four to six people.
With a chicken parm, generally you'll find
it's like a cutlet, right?
Generally it's the breast.
I actually do something unique with this chicken.
I create sort of an airline,
which essentially means the wing is attached.
Take the wishbone out.
How you do that is you apply two incisions on either side,
and you go through, and you just give it a little pull,
and the wishbone comes out like a Y.
Huh! And then you save that for stock.
I want to separate the wings, right?
You can eat that. Just wanna run your knife through.
Then basically just wanna run my knife down either side.
I like to use organic chicken as much as possible.
It's not because I'm bad and bougie,
it's because there's less chemicals.
Under here, right, we have the oyster.
So make sure we grab that oyster up.
We have basically half a chicken, right?
It's not an airline chicken yet.
What I want to do is essentially cut down the center
of this thigh in a sort of L shape to expose the bone
and then I will essentially lift the meat out.
And the meat really naturally just comes off, right?
Don't force it, but this is an amazing way
to present an old school classic dish in a new light, right?
It's a way to be more sustainable in your practices.
You buy a whole chicken, you get the bones,
you get a few different cuts in your chicken parm
so it makes it really interesting.
And once it gets to that joint
I like to just scrape the meat of, really.
So we have our de-boned half chicken
but what I wanna do is create an even cooking surface
on this chicken.
Time to take it to pound town. (audience gasping)
Should I say that it's kind of a sexual reference, isn't it?
(Nyesha laughs)
What I wanna do is use two sheets of plastic
to create a more sturdy work surface.
So we're going skin side down on the plastic.
This chicken tender here is a little bit exposed
so what I'd like to do is just pull her over.
Second sheet of plastic goes over.
Just going to start to tap and feel around, right?
With the thigh, I wanna use this more rigid side
and just start to tenderize that,
(hammer pounding)
and break up those muscle fibers.
'Cause I'm essentially trying to create
one even layer of delicious meats.
From here, I'm gonna use the flat surface
and we want to use this motion of pushing
and pulling away from you, right?
Down and away.
(hammer thumping)
If your skin is not going where you want,
just pull it over, right?
We want everything to be protected.
It's like a little jacket, little skin jacket. Weird.
I have my thigh pretty much where I want it
and I'm going to start to work on the chicken breast a bit.
It has a lot less connective tissue, right?
So I'm not gonna be as like forceful with the chicken.
(hammer pounding)
(dramatic music)
Wow, this is quite the transformation, right?
From whole bird.
Now we have this amazing even surface, very level,
the thigh is slightly thinner than the breast.
Air drying is a key component
in a successful skin-on chicken parm.
You wanna make sure we're air drying the skin just a bit.
Call it a few hours or overnight.
Now that we have the chicken pounded out
I'm going to prepare my dredge
and get ready for the cooking.
When creating this dredge we have a lot of surface to cover
so we wanna use about seven eggs.
After I whisk my eggs, (whisk clanging)
we wanna strain our egg mixture for the dredge.
And that's just gonna capture anything
that really doesn't belong in that beautiful egg mixture.
So I like to use a nice open, even surface.
And that's going to allow my chicken to have room.
One and a half cups of flour.
We want to sift this flour out, right?
Flour actually just sits and compacts on itself in the bag.
And I want to awaken it, right?
I want to get this flower going.
It's like, oh, something's exciting.
I'm gonna be a part of an amazing dish soon.
So the dredging part, I love this part.
This is the most fun.
What I wanna do, we have our chicken. Gorge, gorge.
And I'm going to season the chicken, right?
Remember layering seasoning, layering flavors.
And a little bit of salt on the back.
So what I like to do is take one hand for dry.
I'll add my flour in. None of this should be rushed, right?
Let's make sure that we are covering our entire chicken.
So from here, I'm gonna use my other hand,
and allow that to go into the wet, our egg mixture here.
I go flour first, right?
So that the egg wash has something to stick on
and then back into the flour so that we get a really nice
next-level crunch factor going on here.
And go in with the breadcrumbs.
Ah, ha ha! Gigantic!
Pro tip, I just dust the sheet pan
with a little bit of breadcrumb
just to allow it not to stick.
So now we're going to fry these off
in a beautiful cast iron pan.
We have some beautiful neutral oil heating up, call it 350.
Place this chicken in away from me, right?
This is a very important part.
And placing in the chicken skin side down.
The chicken thigh takes a lot longer to cook
so what I like to do is actually just pierce
a bit of that oil so it really gets in
and cooks the chicken thigh very well.
So I turned up the heat just to touch.
This is gonna be really beautifully crispy
but here I want just a little bit more crisp
so I'll baste my oil over top,
making sure to concentrate on any joint.
The skin side's gonna take a little bit longer to cook
than the opposite side.
So it's not about equal time.
It's maybe 60% on the skin side and 40% on the other side.
So I might just put in a little prop here
just to get that breast out of the fat, right?
But I still want to cook the chicken thigh
just a little bit more.
What I like to do is I actually add in some herbs,
just on the last part, and be careful, right?
This can splatter a bit.
I'm actually gonna use the basil for garnish.
Gonna add in some fresh thyme and some garlic.
(herbs sizzling)
And what's happening is this garlic is pretty much frying
and I'm gonna use that for garnish too.
And we're good, so I'm gonna pull this out.
(choir singing)
Polly-O! It's my favorite for this application.
A great low-moisture mozzarella.
I'm just gonna go down, make sure the cheese is very cold,
and you can get nice, fresh shredded mozzarella.
We are looking for about two cups of cheese.
Definitely at least a cup per chicken.
And a cup for Nyesha.
The build! So half sheet pan.
It's all gonna come to life right here.
Oh, so amazing.
So I take this delicious tomato sauce
and I like a lot of sauce.
But I do wanna add my sauce with intention.
I want a couple of pieces exposed
just so that I get some textures of crispy versus saucy.
Now lots of cheese.
I really want to get some of that cheese, honestly,
intentionally on the sheet pan so as it melts,
I can scoop all of that up.
This goes into a broiler for about two minutes.
You're gonna check it. You're gonna rotate it a little bit.
Maybe two more minutes.
Really, we're looking just to melt the cheese here.
The most epic chicken parm,
if there ever was one is right here.
Jeez. Oh yes.
Ah, salty parm, tiny bit of flaky salt,
a little black pepper,
and of course our delicious accoutrements, right?
All that amazing garlic that we put in the pan.
Don't let that go to waste.
That beautiful fried thyme, use that too.
For more texture, the fried basil.
Ah, this is a meal for one.
I'm getting in here, man. What a treat.
(gentle music)
Happy vegetables made the happy sauce,
made the happy chicken, made the chef happy.
Wow, this is hugging my soul right now.
Beautiful, vibrant, fresh, re-imagined, but classic.
You think Tony Soprano would like this?
Thank you for going on this chicken parm journey with me.
Let me know if you make this at home. I hope you do.
Until next time, enjoy your chicken parm.
(upbeat music)