Firebird Chicken - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with firebird chicken that's right usually when i steal a dish from someone i steal both the recipe and the name but this time that is not the case all right the original firebird chicken is actually a stir fry and quite a bit different than what you're seeing here but i absolutely love the name and thought it would fit perfectly for this very simple extremely spicy and incredibly delicious dish and hopefully one day this becomes so popular that people think that other recipe got its name for me so with that let's go ahead and get started by adding one very large sliced garlic clove to this mortar along with two seeded roughly chopped habanero peppers which also in the store sometimes go by the name of scotch bonnet and then we'll also toss in a spoon of salt at which point we will proceed to smash this into a fine paste which by the way can be extremely dangerous as while you're pounding some of the juice from that pepper could splash up into your eye so i do suggest you use some kind of protective eyewear alright some safety glasses or reading glasses or even sunglasses which not only will protect you but as everybody knows there's no cooler look than wearing sunglasses indoors but anyway the point is smash this down to a paste without burning your eyeballs and once that's been accomplished we will add the last two ingredients so to our fruity ferociously fiery fresh peppers we will add the non-fresh fermented funkiness of a bottled hot sauce which for me is going to be sriracha but please use whatever you want and then last but not least believe it or not we're going to add one large egg and we'll grab a whisk and give this a thorough mixing and not only is this going to act as a marinade but it's also going to form the base of our coating for the chicken oh and by the way since we're going to apply this to the chicken once it's prepped we can finally answer that age-old question of which came first the chicken or the egg it's the egg but anyway once that's mixed we'll go ahead and set it aside and move on to prep a couple boneless skinless chicken breasts and by prep i mean cut into three pieces the first of which being that tenderloin or finger as it's referred to so we'll go ahead and peel slash trim that off and then what we'll do is sort of find that seam where the tenderloin was and we'll place our knife in right about there cutting from the smaller side to the larger side at about a 45 degree angle and as i finish this cut i have no idea why i angled the knife that way creating one of the worst and most irregular cuts i've ever produced all right i think i was looking in the viewfinder instead of paying attention which is of course my standard excuse so please let me show you that one more time all right so first we'll remove that tenderloin which pretty much peels away on its own and then we will find that seam and slice from the smaller side towards the larger side at about a 45 degree angle and then this time finish to cut straight through okay that was a little better and then what we'll do once that's been cut up is generously dust both sides with some kind of starch okay i'm using rice flour here but you could use regular all-purpose flour or even cornstarch if you want okay they're all going to serve about the same purpose but personally i think the rice flour does the best job plus i have a whole bag of it and what else am i going to use it for but anyway you decide i mean you are after all the tim curry of what's about to become a slurry and speaking of horror shows once those pieces are well coated with our flour we can go ahead and pour over our pepper and egg mixture at which point we will take our tongs and toss these pieces until they are completely coated and i said completely make sure you get every nook and cranny and know it might not look like the most appetizing thing ever at this stage but you'll see once we're done pan frying this it is going to look absolutely gorgeous even that horribly cut misshapen piece but before we can pan fry this we need to wrap it up and let it marinate in the fridge from anywhere between 2 and 12 hours and in case you're keeping score at home i did mine for about three at which point we can go ahead and fry that up in a non-stick pan set over medium-high heat into which i put a generous splash of olive oil but any other kind of vegetable oil would work or any melted fat for that matter right clarified butter would work as with some good old-fashioned chicken fat but anyway we will place that in and cook that for about three minutes per side or until beautifully browned and just cooked through and if you see any small spots that don't have any of that slurry you can go ahead and transfer on a little more with your tongs from the plate and as you might expect those smaller pieces will cook faster so generally those will be the first ones we turn and of course also the first one's removed from the pan and you know what i have to say that oddly shaped piece is starting to grow on me it actually turned out to be kind of cute but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and cook these for about three minutes per side and if they feel mushy when you poke them with your finger let them cook but when they spring back they're probably done and that's it we'll go ahead and remove those from the pan from the smallest to the largest and we'll go ahead and serve that up on some rice which in my case was some brown rice that i cooked with some tumeric and peas while you certainly could serve a sauce with these like a sweet chili sauce to cut the heat i'm not going to i'm just going to finish up with some fresh chives because i just wanted pure fire which is exactly what i got and for what is probably the thinnest coating you will ever see on a chicken the amount of flavor and spice it delivered was unbelievable just incredibly flavorful and yes extremely spicy which is why i came up with the name firebird allegedly and above and beyond the taste that coating really does produce an incredible texture and i find really does help keep our chicken juicy i mean come on look at that glistening meat so i really do love this technique for what it does both to the texture and the taste and while this is definitely very spicy it is also very addictive so even though that he keeps building you just can't help but take another bite and i know these things are very subjective but for me this never went over the top and became painfully unpleasant it just straddled that line perfectly but anyway that's it what i'm calling firebird chicken and a special shout out to the blue koi in kansas city where i first came across the name i appropriated for this dish maybe one day i'll be traveling through and i can try their version but until then i'm just gonna have to settle for this which i really did think came out amazingly well and that's why i'm gonna finish up by saying i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredients a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 357,793

Keywords: chicken, spicy, firebird, hot, pepper, jerk, boneless, skinless, breast, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, recipe, easy

Id: Sw83XzYPb5g

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/justanicebreeze]

Damn that looks real spicy.

[u/Dirty_D93]

🤤🤤🤤🤤