Recipe: Chicken Kievs—succulent chicken, oozing herby, garlicky butter with a fabulously crunchy coa
For many 'Chicken Kiev' brings back memories of childhood, of lovely herby butter oozing across the plate. But for many, this simple dish is seen as a staple of the supermarket frozen cabinet, in fact, they are astonishingly easy to make yourself and the results do not compare. Buying fresh chicken and filling it yourself also allows you to control where the meat comes from; most frozen products have little of no information of how the meat was sourced. I bought free range chicken, which comes with a ‘Red Label’ certification in France, this is not the highest level that money can buy, but it does ensure that the chicken was reared responsibly.
For the perfect chicken Kiev, you want it well filled with a really well flavoured butter and coated in the crispest of exteriors. This is not hard to achieve at home with this simple recipe:
Ingredients (serves 2):
2 x chicken breasts 1 egg, beaten 3 cloves of garlic 1 good handful of parsley 50g butter 2 tbsp plain flour 1 slice of stale white bread Oil for frying.
Method:
1. First make your herb butter. Remove the stalks from the parsley and chop finely, place into a bowl. Crush the garlic into this bowl and then add the butter. With a spoon and then your hands, combine this all together and press into a lozenge. Whack this in the freezer until you need it.
2. Now make the breadcrumbs. Blitz the bread with some coarse sea salt in a food processor briefly. Do not over mix, the breadcrumbs should not be powdery but rather flaky like snow.
3. Place the chicken breast on a board with the smooth side down. Now find the ‘tender’ with is a little piece of meat slightly separate from the rest of the breast. This is what we will use to close up the chicken once it is filled. Under the tender make a pocket, as big as you dare, being careful not to go all the way through the meat and out the other side.
4. Fill this pocket with as much of the herb butter as you can. Then cover with the tender, manipulating it with your fingers until no butter is showing.
5. Now preheat the oil to 170C (or thereabouts, I do it by eye and test it by dropping a breadcrumb in—it should sizzle immediately). I use a pan with a bottom that is large enough to lie the chicken breast flat, and just enough oil to come halfway up the side of the filled chicken breast (only 1 or 2 inches)—there is no need to fill the pan with oil.
6. Then line up three bowls on the counter: one with the flour in (seasoned well with salt and pepper), next the beaten egg and finally the breadcrumbs.
7. Coat the chicken in flour, this will help the egg to stick. Now dunk it into the egg, you want it really well covered with egg as this is what will seal the herb butter inside when it hits the oil. Finally coat it liberally in breadcrumbs. If you think that your first attempt was a little hesitant then it does not hurt to dunk it back into the egg and breadcrumbs for a really thick coating.
8. Now place it into the hot oil, it will need about 3mins, then turn it over and cook for a further three minutes. Give each side a further couple of minutes so that in total the chicken will have been cooking for about 10 minutes.
Tip: you can buy ready made Japanese ‘panko’ breadcrumbs which are excellent for breading things, as we are here.