hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with bacon wrap spring chicken
that's right no matter the season or the season means stuffing a chicken breast
with something delicious and then wrapping it and bacon is never a bad
idea since it turns the super boring please wake me up when it's over a piece
of poultry into something significantly more exciting and that's going to be the
case no matter what you end up putting inside so this is one of those videos
where we're really gonna focus on the method and that method starts by making
a stuffing which we'll begin by adding a whole bunch of sliced spring onions to a
little bit of butter in a pan set over medium-high heat
oh by the way these are called spring onions in the spring the rest of the
year they're referred to as scallions or green onions and it will also add a
little bit of diced jalapeno or the pepper of your choice and we'll also do
a little bit of minced garlic as well as a very generous pinch of salt and then
what we'll do is take our frequency small wooden spoon and cook this
stirring for about three or four minutes or so or until our vegetables just start
to soften and sweeten up alright as you might already know you don't want to
stop crunchy undercook vegetables into a chicken breast because if you do the
meats probably going to be cooked before the vegetables are tender and then we
have problems so we'll make sure they're relatively tender at this point and then
once we've decided those that cook long enough we'll go ahead and transfer those
into a bowl where we will let them cool until they're just barely warm or room
temperature either way and then what we'll do once that's cooled down a
little bit let's go ahead and crumble in some feta cheese or if you want you can
use that other cheese what's the one I'm thinking of oh yeah literally any other
cheese and the reason I'm using fat is because I had it left over from the
cacciatore video which apparently is pronounced hot rubbery and by the way to
you people make it upwards if you don't want me to pronounce the K maybe don't
start the word with it but anyway continuing on we'll go ahead and add
some freshly chopped herb okay some parsley and thyme would be nice here or
whatever you're into we will also do some freshly ground black pepper and a
little shake of cayenne and then last but not least a spoonful of fine dry
breadcrumbs for a little bit of moisture absorption and that's it we'll go ahead
and stir smash and smear that to get until everything looks a little
something like this and then once that's been accomplished we can set that aside
and we'll move on to prep our chicken and what I have here are two fairly
bodacious 8 ounce breasts which ideally still have the finger or tenderloin
attached and the reason we want to kind of identify where those are is that
we're actually going to make our incision on the opposite side of that
and before we do this or really anything else in life we want to sort of
visualize what's going to happen and visualize success and what's gonna
happen is we're gonna poke the knife straight in and we'll use that incision
point is sort of a fulcrum while we slice with the tip of the knife inside
to form the pocket that way we'll have a lot of room inside to stuff without
making the opening too big all right so we'll push the knife in
somewhere near the center and then we will use the tip of the knife to slice a
pocket inside almost all the way to the back and then almost all the way to the
front but while we're doing that we're being conscious not to make the opening
too big and that way when we're done slicing we should have a nice big pocket
inside but with only a couple in chomping on the outside all right so
that's the goal and like I said it's much easier if you visualize it first
and by the way I should probably be doing these on a cutting board doing
them on this plate with the lip was not that easy which is why I went piggyback
on the second one but anyway bottom line we're gonna go ahead and cut a pocket
into each of those ideally keeping that opening to about two inches or less and
then what we'll do once at set let's go ahead and fill these with our stuffing
and by the way there is no elegant or graceful way to do this just grab some
and shove it in and as we're doing this we want to make sure we're pushing it
all the way to the back as well as all the way to the front filling the entire
length of the pocket we created and even though a small opening makes it harder
to get it in I really think it's gonna make for a better experience
since there's gonna be less chance our filling comes out and yes even if it's
wrapped in bacon if that opening is really big it's gonna come out so this
could take an extra minute compared to having a giant slice on the side but
it's gonna be worth it as you'll see so I went ahead and stuff both breasts as
shown and if you can't fit all the stuffing in don't worry all right just
hang on to it we'll go ahead and put that in the bottom of our pan
but before we do we'll go ahead and season these on both sides with a
mixture of kosher salt freshly ground black pepper and cayenne or of course
any other seasonings or spices you want I mean you are for all the Charles
Dickens of your bacon wrap spring chickens so please use whatever you
think will make for the best of times and then once these are seasons we can
go ahead and wrap them in bacon and depending on the size you might need to
three or four strips I only ended up needing two because my bacon was long
and thick and besides trying to achieve almost total coverage we really want to
try to have the ends end up on the bottom all right otherwise when it bakes
and contracts are going to spring open so if you have to cut your pieces go
ahead but if at all possible make sure those ends are tucked underneath and we
do want these wrap snugly but don't do them super super tight and of course
having the hole where we stuffed it covered is also a very good idea and
then what we'll do once those are wrapped is transfer those into a pan
that's been very lightly greased with olive oil well before we do if we had
any extra stuffing just go ahead and add it to the pan and that way we can place
our chicken on the top and no one will be the wiser and that stuff will
hopefully caramelize and add a little extra goodness to the pan and I should
mention you can roast these in anything that's oven safe but the nice thing
about using a saute pan is that once he's come out of the oven you can use it
to make a beautiful pan sauce but anyway once we're happy with how those are
situated we'll go ahead and transfer this into the center of a 425 degree
oven for about 30 to 35 minutes or until safely cooked through and hopefully
looking like this oh yeah oh and if you only remember one thing from this video
let it be this anytime we take a pan with a handle out of the oven we always
place a towel on the handle and we leave it there until it's not hot anymore
otherwise there is roughly a 100 percent chance you burned yourself and then you
remember that thing I said about a pan sauce I didn't do that here mostly
because I had like 15 minutes of daylight left so what I did was squeezed
in some lemon juice which I used to deglaze the bottom and lemon juice plus
bacon fat plus chicken pan drippings will make a very fast and delicious sort
of pan sauce for this and yes of course between shots I made sure I scraped and
stirred in all that caramelize goodness from the bottom and once that
was set I went ahead and served up next to some beautifully seared proper
sparrows and please note I could have served the perfect one but I decided to
go with the one that had the slight rupture just to show you that is no big
deal and I went ahead and spooned over some of those beautiful pandro beans
which because we didn't do a proper pan sauce or not emulsified by fantastic
nonetheless and that's it my bird was ready to bisect so I went ahead and cut
through the thickest part so you could see what was going on and what was going
on was this a beautiful moist juicy chicken breast filled with our beautiful
green spring inspired stuffing and that my friends really was extraordinarily
delicious and I really think would be no matter what you put in there thanks to
of course our bacon and when you wrap something like this in bacon it never
really gets super crispy because there's just too much moisture involved but the
trade-off to that not being super crispy is that you end up with an extremely
flavorful not dry chicken breast which is not the easiest thing to pull off so
I really do love this technique but anyway that's it what I'm calling bacon
wrap spring chicken look I touched on earlier above and beyond the specific
ingredients you use this video was really about mastering the technique
which is really not that difficult to pull off
alright the bacon here does most of the heavy lifting so no matter what you end
up stuffing in ears I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to
food whooshes calm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual
and as always enjoy you
you