(light music) - [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Announcer] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Hello there, and welcome to "Charlotte Cooks."

I'm Chef Pamela Roberts and I'm really delighted that you're here with me today, and we're going to make a chicken dish that is irresistible.

As a matter of fact, one of our regional magazines calls it Marry Me Chicken because every time you make it, it's practically guaranteed to result in a marriage proposal.

Well, I wouldn't go that far, but it is a very delicious dish.

It's simple to put together.

So if you want to put together this dish for company, so for friends, anybody you might want to impress, this is the one you might wanna turn to.

It's simple, it's easy, and I've got two dishes we're gonna put together today.

We're gonna start with chicken thighs.

We're gonna use both breasts and thighs, but we're gonna do the breast here in just a moment.

When you go and you buy the chicken thighs, one thing you're gonna notice when you open the packages, they come in all different sizes.

The beautiful thing about this dish is that the size isn't gonna matter.

If they're all the same size, hey, that's a bonus.

If they're different sizes, hey, that's great.

You can satisfy different appetites with that.

We're gonna take our chicken thighs and we're gonna lay them out.

All we're gonna do is flip them over and we are going to open them up.

When we open them up this is gonna create an area that we can put some stuffing.

You can make this a main dish.

You can also make it part of a small dish like we're doing today.

To stuff our chicken thighs we're going to use a really easy simple cheese and we're going to add some things to it.

So what we'll use is our base cheese, and what I've added to this is a little seasoning.

Now our little seasoning here has got some chopped pecans in it.

It has got some sesame seeds.

It has got some coriander seeds and some fennel seeds.

And you can really be very, very creative with this.

You can also add some chopped pecans.

Now if you're gonna add chopped pecans or any kind of nut you wanna make sure they're chopped up kind of fine.

You don't wanna have big chunks in this because your chicken thighs may not be that big.

And so just a little bit.

And if you're not using an already prepared cheese, then you will wanna add a little bit of salt and pepper to this.

So all you're gonna do is just stir this in and then it's ready to go.

So all we're gonna do now is take a little bit of this and put it in the center of each of our chicken thighs.

But before we do that, we've gotta season it with a little bit of salt and pepper so the inside of this chicken is seasoned, okay?

So we're gonna take a couple of small spoons and we're going to take a little spoonful of this cheese mixture.

We're gonna put it right here in the center.

All right, now don't add too much because you don't need too much.

The cheese will actually melty all over the inside of the chicken as it cooks.

Try not to contaminate all the extra cheese you have here in case you don't need it all.

If you have a smaller one, make sure that you keep your cheese amount just a little bit on the smally side.

You're gonna feel when you have your chicken thighs one edge is thicker than the other.

Go ahead and roll your thick side over, and this is your little oyster guy and you wanna take him and stick him right here in the center.

And you're gonna have a nice little roll, just like that.

Okay?

I'm gonna take him, I'm gonna roll him, bring him over, roll him over.

Just like that.

Okay, got this little piece.

Don't pull it off.

We're gonna take it and we're gonna roll it over.

We're gonna stick him in and roll him over just like this.

And then once again, here's our little oyster.

Leave him here.

Tuck him on the inside.

Roll him over.

And there we go.

All right.

Now we're ready to do a standard breading procedure.

Instead of using an egg wash today I'm going to use buttermilk.

And you could, as long as you have some kind of a dairy product here.

It could be egg, it could be buttermilk, it could be heavy cream, it could be plain milk, it could be canned milk, just something to wet the flour, and then we're gonna use panko.

But before I do that, I wanna season the outside of my chicken because I've already seasoned the inside of my chicken.

Some people will go ahead and season the flour, but this way I know that my chicken has got seasonings on it and I'm not depending on the seasoning and the flour to actually hit the chicken.

I'm gonna use a small sheet pan lined with parchment paper that I'm gonna put these chickens on as I finish it.

Now, before I do that, I wanna spray this with a little bit of pan spray.

I'm also gonna add a little bit of that pan spray on the top of these when I'm all done.

Now here, this is how we're gonna do this.

I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna roll it in the flour.

You're gonna hold it together and roll it in the flour to keep this little parcel all together.

Okay?

I'm gonna hold it, roll it into the buttermilk, get it nice and moist, pick it up, and then we're gonna roll it into our breadcrumbs, get it nice and covered with our breadcrumbs.

And then we're going to lay them on the sheet pan, just like that.

Okay?

So let me go ahead and do all of these for you.

If you see the oyster sticking out, just stick it back in.

Make sure you cover it with some flour.

That's gonna help glue it into place.

Roll it into the buttermilk and then roll it into your breadcrumbs.

You can use any breadcrumb you want.

In fact, when I was in the store I was noticing they have seasoned breadcrumbs.

They've got brown breadcrumbs, like regular Italian breadcrumbs.

Panko is a Japanese breadcrumb and we like them because they're big and they're fluffy and they're really extra crispy and it's really kind of fun.

I love panko.

It's my favorite breadcrumb.

But you can also get seasoned panko breadcrumbs.

So take a look at 'em and be creative.

Now you can also season your breadcrumbs if you want to.

It's not hard to do.

Just put seasonings in them.

That's all.

Now, before I pop these in the oven I'm gonna give 'em a little spray with some vegetable oil.

Now if you don't have it in a spray form, you could take it and just brush a little bit on there.

But the spray is gonna really, really help this get nice and golden brown.

We bake it at 350 degrees for approximately 30 minutes.

You wanna see that the golden brown is all over.

You don't want 'em to be pale and you do want them to be nice and crispy.

(upbeat music) Now we're at the Marry Me Chicken part of the show.

We are going to actually be using a chicken breast.

And when you go to the store and buy a chicken breast you can actually get your butcher to do this next step.

We're gonna cut this in half and actually get two beautiful portions out of this chicken breast.

And the way we're gonna do that is we're gonna turn it upside down.

We wanna make sure that the chicken is nice and trimmed.

We wanna take any of this bright white sinew, connective tissues that are here, wanna go ahead and cut those off because we're not necessarily gonna be using that.

So let me show you how we're gonna do this.

You're going to put your hand flat on top of the chicken.

You're gonna pick up your knife, your very sharp knife, and you're going to watch right down the center here and you're gonna cut it down the center just like this.

And you can watch and you can feel this chicken breast underneath your hand.

And then you're gonna end up with two pieces of chicken breast that pretty much kinda look the same.

You can have your butcher do this for you if you don't wanna do this, they're happy to do it for you.

Just tell them that you want 'em cut in half, but tell 'em that you want it cut in half this way and not this way.

(laughs) Okay?

All right.

So next we're gonna get some heat underneath our saute pan.

How do you know when your saute pan is hot enough?

You wouldn't put your hand on it.

Okay, you are like, "Woo, no, I don't wanna do that."

And the reason that you wanna do that is because when you put your meat into the saute pan you wanna hear it sizzle, 'cause that's what's gonna give it that really pretty nice golden brown color, and that's what we're after here.

In this little container here, I have a combination of olive oil and just a regular vegetable oil, and the reason I have my regular vegetable oil in here is because I want to raise the smoke point of my oil.

And I'm also gonna add some butter in there.

So when I add the butter and the oil together, if you just put plain old butter in your pan, it's gonna burn.

So what I'm gonna do, instead of adding plain old butter, I'm gonna add a little oil to the pan and a little bit of butter.

All right?

And swirl it around a little bit.

I'm gonna save this for my sauce.

I'm gonna take my chicken breasts, season them, salt and pepper on both sides, put it into the pan.

Finish seasoning.

A bit of seasoning on both sides.

Salt, pepper.

I'm using white pepper.

You can use dark pepper.

And the only reason I'm using white pepper is because I really don't wanna see the pepper.

And so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to cook this until it is golden brown on both sides and I'm gonna take it off and I'm gonna put it on the side and then I'm gonna make my sauce.

I'm not gonna clean out my pan at all.

I'm gonna make my sauce because what's happening is as this chicken cooks, it's developing a nice brown crust, not only on the chicken itself, but on the pan itself.

And so when we add all these other ingredients to it later on, we're gonna have all this marvelous stuff to go in there.

Okay?

When it is ready to turn the chicken will release itself easily from the pan, but you do wanna make sure that you've got a nice golden brown going on underneath this chicken.

Oh, nice and golden brown.

Look at that.

When you try to lift your chicken up, guys, if it's sticking, it's not ready yet, so let it sit.

And this got a little bit of a white spot on there because it was bubbling up underneath.

And so it'll be okay.

I'm not gonna worry about it.

So this chicken does not have to be 100% cooked.

It needs to be about 80% cooked 'cause we're gonna put it back in the pan and warm it up in the sauce and that sauce will finish cooking it.

So while that's finishing, what I wanna do is I wanna come over here.

I'm gonna get some cheese ready.

We're gonna have some beautiful Parmesan cheese that we're gonna put on here at the very end.

We're gonna stir this in.

So I'm gonna go ahead and grate my cheese on my microplane.

And the reason I'm doing this first is because I wanna use my garlic on my microplane as well and I may not necessarily wanna have garlic in my cheese.

All right, lemme turn this heat down a little bit.

All right, these are gonna be ready to turn.

Oh, beautiful golden brown on both sides.

See that?

Put it off to the side.

Pretty golden brown on both sides.

Off to the side.

Now in this pan, leave your oil, add a little bit more of your butter 'cause now we're gonna work on our sauce.

Put our butter in here.

We already have our oil in here so we don't need to add more oil.

We're adding our butter for what?

Flavor.

We're adding some shallots.

Cut up some shallots nice and fine.

Add some shallots into our pan.

How many shallots do you need?

As many shallots as you like.

Put them in here.

Swish 'em around.

You could start smelling those shallots right away.

I'm gonna add a little bit of dried oregano.

We're gonna add a little bit of dried thyme.

If you wanted to use fresh thyme, you certainly could.

Just drop the whole thing in there and pull the sticks out later.

We're gonna add a little bit of red pepper flake and we're gonna add a little bit of tomato paste.

Now we're gonna stir all this up.

Turn your heat way down.

You don't wanna burn.

Just wanna get this mixed up.

Next we're gonna grab some white wine.

I'm gonna come in here with some white wine deglazed.

When you're adding your wine make sure you cover the bottom of your pan.

The reason we cover the bottom of our pan is because that's gonna make sure that we're going to get all of that flavor.

Now that's gonna take all of that beautiful flavor off the bottom of the pan, and it's gonna get those nice herbs that got a little bit toasted.

Stir that in a little bit.

Add some sun-dried tomatoes.

Now on the sun-dried tomatoes, guys, when you buy them, before I add them in let me show you, when you buy them, you can get them in julienne strips, which makes it really easy.

You can leave these hole, but I find that these are a little bit large to bite on.

So I usually just take my knife and run them through and cut them up into little smaller pieces, just chunks.

When you buy them, you can buy them in halves, you can buy them in julienne strips.

You can even buy them chopped if you want.

Wanna get this up to a simmer.

We wanna reduce this just a little bit.

Add some of these sun-dried tomatoes to this.

This is really some of this stuff that makes this dish so yummy.

Stir that in.

And then once this gets reduced a little bit more I'm gonna add some garlic.

Let me see.

Do I need more cheese?

Yeah, I want more cheese.

This is that Parmesan-Reggiano, and you could tell because it's written here on the rind.

It's so good.

It's definitely worth the money.

People will always ask me, is it really worth it to buy the Reggiano?

Yeah, it really is.

It's a special cheese.

You can even save the rind and put the rind in soups and stews and get that cheese flavor going on.

When I was in the store the other day they must have just opened up a wheel because I walked around the corner and they had this big display of all these wedges, and it was just, the smell was just beautiful.

I'm gonna add some garlic to this.

The original recipe requires one clove of garlic for every chicken breast that you're cooking.

It's a lot of garlic, but it's also what makes it taste good.

If you don't like garlic and you have to leave it out, I'm so sorry.

It just makes me sad 'cause garlic is just one of those wonderful flavors.

I love it.

And add one more clove of garlic to this.

And the reason I'm adding my garlic at this stage is because garlic has a tendency to burn, especially fresh garlic.

It burns really quick, so if I were to put this in at the very beginning when I was doing all that saute with the onions and stuff, at this point my garlic would be burned, and that wouldn't be too delicious for anybody.

Okay, that's gonna be enough garlic.

Okay.

Oh, yep, there we go.

All right, so stir this stuff in.

Get it all going here.

All right, so now see how the wine has cooked down.

Next thing I'm gonna add is some chicken stock.

Once again, get enough to cover the bottom of the pan.

Get it liquidy again.

And we're going to bring that up to a boil.

And the last thing we're gonna add to our sauce is some heavy cream.

So once this comes up to a boil again, we're gonna get it nice and thick.

We're gonna add our heavy cream.

We're gonna add our chicken back in.

And when you add your chicken back in, guys, if you have any juice that came out of your chicken while it was resting, pour it back in so that way you can have that beautiful flavor added.

Okay?

So now I'm gonna add some heavy cream.

We do not have to have our sauce reduce when we add our chicken stock like we did when it reduced with the wine.

We just wanna get it up to a nice boil.

Add your heavy cream to it.

We only need about a half cup, not much.

Basically all we're doing here is just looking to change the color.

Turn this down to a simmer.

So while this sauce is simmering here, let's talk about seasonings.

Most recipes will say, adjust your seasonings, especially at the end.

It'll say, adjust seasonings to taste.

What are they talking about?

Are they talking about the oregano?

Are they talking about the thyme or the garlic that we have in here?

Those are seasonings, but whenever you see a recipe that just says adjust seasonings to taste, they're talking just about salt and pepper.

In the culinary world, salt concentrates as it cooks.

And so in the beginning you'll have a little bit of salt to help dry out the moisture.

You don't wanna heavily salt in the very beginning.

In the middle you can add a little bit of salt, but remember, it's gonna concentrate as it cooks.

And so at the very end, you always wanna grab a spoon and give it a taste and see if it needs more salt, see if it needs a little pepper.

And at that point too, if it needs any of your other seasonings, you can put that in there.

But typically, you're only adjusting your salt and your pepper at the very, very end.

So when it says adjust seasonings to taste, that's what it's talking about, is just using your salt and your pepper.

Now we can go into a whole conversation about what kind of salt and what kind of pepper, but right now we're just talking about plain old white salt, and we use kosher salt in the kitchen because it does not have iodine.

Iodine's very bitter and kosher salt doesn't have that.

And we use white pepper if you don't wanna see it.

And we use black pepper if you wanna see it.

So this is ready to go.

This is beautiful.

This looks really, really nice here.

We're gonna turn this way down.

And now what we're going to do is we're going to bring out our chicken from the oven and we're gonna go ahead and plate.

Ta-da!

We've got these beautiful little chicken thighs that are breaded and they're roasted and they're ready to go.

We have on our plates, now to round out this meal we have baked potato.

Now, when you're doing your baked potato you can cut them in half, like in half this way instead of in half this way so you can stand 'em up on your plate, you scoop it out, you can make a mashed potato and squirt it back in there.

Or what I did with these is I just loosened up the potato and I put some sour cream and some seasonings in there and some chives on top.

I've also got some steamed green beans here, which is where I'm going to place my beautiful little chicken thighs.

And we're gonna lay these directly on top of our green beans, just right on top of the green beans on both of our plates here, all right?

I'm gonna put this one on here.

These looks nice and cute.

You go on top of the green beans as well.

And next, what I'm going to do because we have these gorgeous chicken breast and we have this beautiful sauce, I'm gonna take these chicken breasts outta the sauce.

Oh, look at that sauce.

That sauce is amazing.

Take our chicken breast, lay it on our plate.

The next thing we're gonna do to finish our sauce we need a little tiny bit of nice quality balsamic vinegar.

I'm gonna use like a half a teaspoon, not much.

I'm gonna stir that in.

Why am I using that?

It's gonna give us a nice winy vinegar acid to our sauce.

And the reason we do that is because when we have the cream and the butter in here, sometime the cream is too strong on its own and you need a small bit of the acid to calm the creaminess down in the sauce.

It just helps it be just a more pleasing taste.

You know, sometimes things are just too sweet.

Well, we don't want this to be too sweet.

We just want this to be nice and yummy.

All right.

So make sure you have enough sauce on your plate that you can actually have enough to sop up your potato and you could put some with your chicken thigh.

You're going to grab a fresh basil leaf.

Just lay this fresh basil leaf right on here.

It's gonna give you some beautiful flavor.

And if you wanted to use the little leaves you can use the little leaves.

It's gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous with this dish.

We're gonna take a little bit of our Parmesan cheese and sprinkle our Parmesan cheese all over the plate, like a little gentle snowfall.

Just a nice little spread of your Parmesan-Reggiano cheese.

All right, guys, here we go.

Are you ready for this?

Here we go.

Marry Me Chicken, beautiful sun-dried tomatoes, sauteed chicken breast, a stuffed chicken thigh, green beans, a stuffed baked potato.

Guys, it may not get you a proposal, but it'll certainly make people very, very happy.

So I hope you enjoyed this episode of "Charlotte Cooks."

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Send me an email at pamela.roberts@cpcc.edu.

You can watch this show and past episodes on PBS Charlotte Passport or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

So thank you for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks" and I'm so glad you were here with me today, so let me know how Marry Me Chicken works out for you.

(upbeat music) (light music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.