Sunday, April 14, 2013

Daring Cooks: Chicken Ballotine



For the April Daring Cooks Challenge, Lisa from Parsley, Sage and Sweethas challenged us to de-bone a whole chicken, using this video by Jacques Pepin as our guide; then stuff it, tie it and roast it, to create a Chicken Ballotine.
A Ballotine is one of those things that I had heard about before and just always thought it was one of those insanely difficult things that chefs do to show how talented they are.  I never really thought it was something I would ever do.  Well, I was wrong.  Turns out it is not really that difficult and it makes a pretty delicious chicken.  Some definitions of Ballotine say that it is a de-boned leg but in this challenge we de-bone a whole chicken while essentially leaving it a one piece. 
Instead of going through this step by step with lots of pictures Lisa made the wise decision to make this a video challenge.  Jacques Pepin  has a ten minute video that you can see here that shows the whole process.  In the video I think he says that it should take 5-10 minutes to de-bone a whole chicken.  I think it took me about a half hour but a lot of that time was spent watching the video over and over to make sure I was doing it correctly.  I can honestly say that I think it would take less than ten minutes the next time.  I was very surprised at how easy it was and how little knife-work there was to the whole process.
The nice part of the de-boned chicken is that it gives you a nice big piece of uniform meat that is great for stuffing.  I stuffed mine with a mixture of spinach, bread, and mozzarella cheese.  The video also gives a very nice demonstration of trussing the stuffed chicken.  I also made the sauce/gravy that Lisa gave us the recipe for.
The chicken was fabulous.  It looked very elegant and would be a great recipe for entertaining.  It also tasted great.  I loved the stuffing and couldn't get enough of the sauce.  Now if I ever decide I want to make a Turducken for Thanksgiving I will have the major technique figured out.

7 comments:

Lisa said...

I'm so glad you enjoyed this challenge! I love the way you plated your ballotine..so colorful wit the tomatoes and, is it p parsley? In any event...thank so much for taking part in my challenge! Post Thanksgiving, I'm going to be looking for that Turducken!

Ruth Ellis said...

Beautiful photos and a delicious looking finished dish - great job!

Monkey Queen said...

Your bird does indeed, look elegant. I really got a kick out of taking all the bones out the my birds and it made my 8 year old laugh. Great job!

Todd Meadows said...

No tomatoes - that is just the carrots from the sauce in your recipe. Color must be off for one of us :) Loved the challenge
.

Lisa Duvillard said...

wao ! how did you manage to get a stuffed chicken so clean? haha
You're right, the sauce was amazing!

Barb Glennie said...

This looks so good! And I agree with you; it's a great technique to know and isn't something I'd have tried without this challenge. Well done!

Lisa said...

Ahhh..ok. Thank you, Todd!