Poulet Papillote: Chicken in a Pocket
Poulet Papillote is French. I don't know why I think of this dish in French - but I do. Probably inspired by this blog entry by another Cordon Bleu student - Ms. Glaze. I wish I could find Chicken from Bresse (in France) here in Spain. There was a famous chicken shop across the street from our Paris apartment that sold them - - I miss it.
I baked a chicken the other day. Wanting a low-fat variant I figured I would cook it in foil so that the fat would escape but the closed package would keep the meat moist.
Updated: I forgot to mention the celery
Ingredients
R-L: Chicken, salt (the jar at the back), aluminium [aluminum] foil, leeks, carrot, celery, fresh onion, lemon, the pink things are Food Loops
Before wrapping
Wash it. Salt and Pepper inside. Stuff with the lemon and chopped ingredients, tie with the pink wrappy things, oil it up, some onion goes outside
Cooked
Cooked, wrapped in doubled up foil, for 2 hours at 175C [350F]. This was a 2 kg bird [5#]
Ingredients
- 2 kg chicken
- salt
- pepper
- ½ lemon (had been previously squeezed for some other recipe)
- 2 leeks
- 2 celery sticks
- 1 carrot
- 2 fresh onions
- 3 sticks lemon grass (the secret ingredient)
- olive oil (virgin)
Procedure
- Preheat oven to 175C [350F]
- chop veggies
- wash the chicken (reportedly creates a crispier skin)
- trim excess fat (if any)
- salt & pepper inside the bird
- put ½ lemon in the cavity
- put in the chopped vegetables
- wrap the legs up
- oil the bird
- onions outside too
- wrap in doubled up foil
- seal well
- into the oven for 2 hours
- open up the package
- broil for 7 minutes (to brown an otherwise white chicken)
- Leave to stand for 10 minutes out of the oven (to cool to handling temperature)
- Lift out, leaving the fat behind
Notes
- The lemon grass changes, subtly, the taste of the whole thing. It's quite useful to have around
- The vegetable selection was just what I had in the bottom of the cooler. I would have put in zucchini too if I'd had a nice one.
- Two hours was lots of time. Could have been 90 minutes - - or three hours. This method of cooking in foil is not time sensitive.
- You can eat the stuffing from inside the bird. Delish.
3 comments:
Hi, Will
Have you ever brined a bird before roasting? I put the bird in a deep pot in the fridge covered in a solution of 1 handful of kosher salt dissolved in one gallon of water. Sometimes I add an equal amount of brown sugar. Let it sit overnight, then dry it off, season as desired, and roast it. It makes for the most tender chicken...
I've never brined a bird. I've heard about it though. Mostly in relation to thanksgiving turkeys. I'll give it a thought. Logically the salts should allow moisture to penetrate during the process.
Perhaps some herbs in the brine would penetrate extra flavour too.
Might be worth doing a 'test kitchen' trial - 2 birds, same recipe, one brined the other straight.
I showed this one to Mr. Right and he and I agree that it's a recipe that is begging to be made. I'll let you know if we were as successful as yours looks.
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