Airline Chicken Breast (Enhanced) - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from food wishes comma with airline chicken that's where i come fly with me let's fly let's fly away back to a time when traveling on an airplane was considered a very special experience and the ladies wore dresses in the men wore suits and ties and people would smoke cigarettes and drink cocktails the whole way oh it was quite the scene in this airplane wing shape chicken breast was one of the most popular menu items from that era but unfortunately it's pretty much been lost in time which is why i'm so excited to show you how to do this here and to get started what we're gonna need is at least one whole chicken this is ready to use airline breasts are almost impossible to find in the store these days before we actually create our airline breasts we're gonna do two things first we're gonna remove half the wing by cutting through that joint where the flat part of the wing meets the drum at and then we're also very carefully gonna cut through the skin between the thigh and the breast all right be careful not to slice into the meat but we're just slicing between that skin that separates them to make this next step a little easier and by the way I should mention if you're gonna do this you may want to look through some of our chicken thigh and chicken leg recipes since you're definitely gonna have those left over and ready to use and then what we'll do once a little bit of that initial preps been done is take our finger and find the breastbone that divides the two breasts which is kind of easy to see since it's directly in the middle but even easier to feel and once identify what we'll do is slide our knife directly on top of that but as we do our knifes can actually slide along one side or the other and then what we'll do once we've cut a little bit on either side of that bone and we've basically identified where the breast starts we will slowly but surely slice that breast off the carcass by keeping our knife flat against the carcass whether that's the breast bone now or eventually the ribcage and we'll use mostly the tip in the first few inches of our knife and by the way the biggest challenge for me here is not to block the camera and to figure out which angle you can see this best at but bottom line as long as you keep your blade pressed against the bone and not slicing into the meat you're doing it right and what we can do when we get to about here is go ahead and cut through more of that skin that's holding that thigh in the bottom of that breast together all right so hopefully you can get a pretty good look here what's going on on the side in the back of the chicken but let me go ahead and stop here and let me turn this around so you can see how we're gonna trim it off the front and as I just described you want to make sure we keep our blade right against the bone in this case the wishbone okay can you see that let's keep the tip of our knife right there and we'll continue cutting off the front of the breast all the way down to the bottom and theoretically at this point the only thing holding that breast and wing on to the carcass is one ball and socket joint which should be pretty easy to see and feel and then somehow some way with the tip of our knife we will find that joint and we'll cut right through that cartilage and that's it congratulations you just created an airline chicken breast and we could go ahead and use that as is and any and all of our favorite chicken breast recipes but wait there's more I'm gonna show you a technique for enhancing this breast using the tenderloin from the other side or chicken finger or chicken fillets it's referred to so we'll go ahead and remove that little strip of meat either by pulling or trimming with our knife and then what we'll do if need be sometimes there's a little bit of connective tissue attached to one of the ends and well it's not a big deal that can be a little tough so I'll usually take a few seconds to trim that out if necessary otherwise just leave it no big deal and once they've been removed and trimmed we'll go ahead and season these up with a little bit of olive oil as well as some kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper and then in my case a little bit of herb de Provence and it's probably super obvious but I'll tell you anyway this techniques gonna work with any and all of your favorite spices so please please use whatever you want I'm you are after all the Michael Buble of how to flavor your chicken filet so not only do you not have to use what I used I don't even think I want you to all right come up with your own thing speaking of which I forgot the Cayenne so I stopped and added some but anyway we're gonna do is season these up and then believe it or not we're actually gonna stuff these under the skin oh yeah you heard me what we'll do once those are set is take our finger and gently but firmly push that under the skin right next to the wing bone and you'll see we'll easily separate and then we'll do is slide our highly seasoned chicken tenderloin under the skin and by the way if there's a big around I like that end to go in first because that will match up with us smaller end of the breast and then once it's in there we'll make sure it's nicely centered and I'll press down and smooth out nicely and then we'll go ahead and do the same thing to the other breast and basically my idea here is that we're taking a little piece it off and dries out when we cook it anyway and by using it under the breast not only is that gonna stay moister but as this cooks because that skins a little bit stretched out I think even more fat renders out and it gets a little bit crispier so I believe this little bonus technique has more than one advantage and that's it once we've successfully slid that piece of meat under the skin we will finish off the seasoning by applying a generous sprinkling of kosher salt on both sides at which point our airline chicken breasts are ready to cook or of course we could wrap them up and pop them in the fridge for later okay this is definitely something you can prep ahead of time and yes when you put two of these together they do look like a heart which I love I mean heart but anyway if we want we can wrap these up and use them later but since I need some final shots let's go ahead and cook a couple which I'm gonna do in this pan set over medium-high heat and a little bit of olive oil starting of course with the skin side down and generally in the restaurant once these are marked in the pan they're finished in the oven but if you want even though it's a little trickier we can do these all the way in the pan on top of the stove so what I did is give that first side about six or seven minutes and we'll go ahead and flip that over and cook it on the other side until cooked through and we'll also back our heat down to medium and of course if you have to adjust that up or down go ahead that is just you cooking and sometimes what I like to do while there's second sides cooking is go ahead and toss in a chunk of butter along with some fresh herbs and once our butter melts it gets infused with all that herbaceous goodness we can use that to base their breasts which if someone's watching you do this totally makes it look like you know what you're doing but anyway we'll go ahead and let that second side cook they steam with our butter if we so desire and we will continue to do that until our chicken is cooked through which for many folks in America means 165 internal Tampa but not me I like to live dangerously I only go to about 150 Shh do not tell the USDA but the fact is once you reach 140 to 145 anything that could hurt you is dead and by not going all the way up to 165 you need is something that's way way more tender and juicy as you're about to see and once that is done to our liking we'll go ahead and remove that from the pan and we'll keep that warm for about five minutes while we make our pan sauce and we'll do that bad in a splash of vinegar to our pan drippings along with a little bit of chicken broth or stock and we'll go ahead and bring that up to a boil on high whisking occasionally and we'll the do is boil that for about two minutes which should release all that goodness from the bottom and then once that happens all we need to do is turn off the heat and whisk in a chunk of cold butter and thanks to the acidity of this liquid and the motion of that whisk that butter is going to be emulsified in creating a very simple very beautiful extremely flavorful pan sauce or pans you if you prefer and that's it other than tasting that for seasoning you're pretty much done and ready to serve up which is what I'm gonna do right now and I'm gonna go ahead and cut my beautiful airline breasts twice to hopefully make for a little bit more of an interesting presentation and I'm gonna go ahead and transfer that next to some prop spinach and I will go ahead and spoon over our freshly made butter sauce actually now that I think about it this is a double butter sauce note to self trademark phrase double butter sauce and by the way when your sauce is something with crispy skin put the sauce underneath all right if you spoon the sauce over the skin like I'm doing here you're gonna lose that Chris penis so do as I say not as I did speaking of which I finished that up with a sprig of rosemary that I think we can all agree add it absolutely nothing to that plate so maybe not do that either but anyway despite that I still think this came out looking absolutely gorgeous so I grabbed a fork a knife and went in for the official taste and as promised not only did that fillet under the skin help keep everything nice and moist and juicy it also allowed us to season this chicken breast from the inside out and by the way I can tell you're a little concerned that that breast looks undercooked but you know what it really is not all right part of it is our dry seasoning plus our camera angle plus all that extra moisture from not overcooking it that's giving it sort of a translucent look but as you can see here in the close-up as I cut through this it really is cooked through and the reason it looks like this is because it's not cooked to 165 so I know people freak out when they don't see pure white chalky looking chicken breast but as I said this is perfectly safe and if you've never had chicken cooked this way def definitely try like this sometime at your own risk of course so to summarize I just loved everything about this although in hindsight I did regret now using fresh bright beautiful green herbs inside since I thought that we looked a little better but anyway that's it the airline chicken breast well we will never recapture that golden era of air travel and being able to fly anywhere we want without ID we can however with some very basic knife skills recreate one of the classic dishes from that time so I really do hope you give this a try soon head over to food wishes calm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 521,952

Keywords: Airline, Chicken, Breast, poulty, boneless, easy, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, recipes, recipe, demo, technique, trick, tip, diy, butchery

Id: 5fA8K4moXdI

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 07 2018