Recreating Emeril Lagasse's Chicken Cordon Bleu From Taste | Reverse Engineering | Bon Appétit

hi I'm Hannah I'm in the VA Test Kitchen about to have a super secret conversation about Chris Morocco once again we're putting Chris's super taster abilities to the test this is Emeril Lagasse's chicken cordon bleu I'm challenging Chris to recreate this dish with all of the ingredients in just one day he'll be able to taste it touch it and smell it but at no point will he be able to see this dish at the end of the day we'll come back to see his final creation and I'll be the judge [Music] for a second it smelled like low-key Thanksgiving and gravy Maybe huh I'm getting Supreme crispiness there seems to be kind of like a lobe of situations and then like another lobe of situation that is maybe divided like one piece of something breadcrumb coating on chicken it's got to be a pretty you know decent sized chicken breast that was butterflied open so that it becomes like one sort of giant cutlet curious about what's in here and that thing is ham it's giving me City ham Vibe so like a wet brine that's a little bit maybe Smoky lightly cured or then there's cheese in here too um oh God there's no elegant way to do this unfortunately tastes like kind of like a Swiss something in like the gruyere realm I think we've got a big chicken breast it is then dredged in what I'm assuming is probably like a flower egg breadcrumb three-part dredge fine bread crumb salt pepper deeply browned I don't know that I'm getting tons of other flavor here everything's really nicely seasoned salt is right there and also the expression of black pepper this one it's actually providing some degree of heat florality a little bit of like intensity and vibrancy it's pretty interesting however there really is this quite pronounced Umami forward quality to this dish there could be a pinch of cayenne pepper a little bit of garlic powder things that are just boosting overall flavor but without necessarily announcing themselves just gonna watch me all afternoon all of you aren't you thanks and then there's this seems to be a mixture of baby peas and rice seems pretty plain giving you a meat plus two kind of vibe chicken in the presence of ham and cheese has got to be chicken cordon bleu it's a little bit like country club food I've never even been to a country club but like this is like kind of what I imagine you're gonna see on the menu I mean I think it works it's delicious and it and it makes sense I feel good with this first tasting and I'm ready to make a shopping list right back at you perfect the key to the entire dish large boneless skinless chicken breasts we also needs like a straight up like swiss cheese option I'd love a gruyere option City ham then AP flour eggs fine bread crumb plain I would love to check out a seasoned breadcrumb option to do a little side by side on that you know we could almost make our own seasoned breadcrumb as an option consider a little bit of cayenne maybe even a little bit of like paprika garlic powder onion powder great I've got my ingredients here that'll be what I use to do my first Tempe dish and um yeah somebody's gonna go shop and we'll be right back foreign First Impressions there's not a whole heck of a lot here like this is like you know one of those moments where hubris can easily come in you know thinking you've got it in the bag yeah Italian style you never just got sent off to the movies the big container of Italian style breadcrumbs in a spoon no big picture we're gonna do rice and peas and get it out of the way then we're gonna butterfly the chicken laminate it with cheese and ham dredge the chicken and then we'll be ready to cook honestly the rice and the peas just there to round out the chicken make it so that the chicken's not just like sitting there alone on a plate did you see that great spatial awareness keep your peas looking vibrant defrost them in water so we've got some cheese options I mean it all comes back to cheese somehow or another so this is regular Swiss cheese flavor's okay A little chalky those is like the cabage gruyere maybe too fancy this already smells like funky gym sock you know it's pretty nice but this is a slightly drier cheese which means it's not going to melt as well remember that cheese pull you know in the original dish it was like a slightly higher kind of water content that you'd get here the Swiss cheese a from the thinness perspective nice even coverage B from a flavor perspective being fairly mild see it's just gonna melt better all right no ham when I refer to City ham I'm talking about like a cured wet brined ham lightly Smoky flavored and Aroma I'm thinking it's just one slice here all right so let's let's talk about the chicken which I'm going to open up it's called butterflying This is a way to turn something that's thicker into something thinner but still maintain its Integrity as one piece I'm honestly wondering if I need to pound this out slightly because otherwise I'm going to have a hard time getting all of this in there using these you know what I'm saying [Music] I think we need to go wider and thinner so the top part of the breast is where it's going to be thickest and bottom thinnest this just evens out those two parts want to season the inside of the chicken the ham is going to add light smokiness and a little bit more intensity of flavor cheese is going to add fat chicken breast notoriously devoid of fat and can use that so much this is a pretty thin layer of business here just go one ham and then we'll actually count next time so I feel pretty good about this set this aside and focus on dredge dredging usually happens in three parts first thing flour dries out food preps it for getting a liquid layer in this case we're going to use egg egg has this wonderful ability to have the proteins coagulate as it Cooks it's going to provide wonderful levels of adhesion and then your breadcrumb layering so I want to actually just chat about the breadcrumbs one more time I know we smelled the Italian bread crumbs but we didn't taste the Italian style bread crumbs My grandmother used these in everything I mean I swear she put it in salad dressing these have not changed in decades and it has like some really wonderful qualities to it it's just so strong this is like whoa this would be so prevalent as a flavor it would really leap out if it had been in the original dish instead of using that we're gonna go with plain fine bread crumbs salt in all of the dredging elements something that's well seasoned means salt brought out and realized the maximum flavor potential of a food black pepper in the bread crumb and black pepper and the flour I'm not going to put black pepper in the egg it just kind of upsets me to see it in there looking all speckly have some other ingredients you know in this breading mixture I'm not convinced that we need them right now so we're going seasoned flour I'll let it trip off any excess and then into our breadcrumb start getting some neutral oil hot in a skillet over here I think I was tasting olive oil in the original neutral oil feels like the safer BET right now the chicken really has to be deep golden super burnished and also like it's gonna get so much more flavor for having that crispy outer shell color on the first side the oil was a little bit hot so my color kind of sucks so I'm just calming the heat down a little bit and I'm hoping that the other side can be in my presentation side so I actually look like I know what I'm doing rice is done keys are defrosted so color on that second side I'd say is like way better honestly a little bit surprised that the cheese wouldn't start to ooze out in spots but but maybe I didn't use enough but I think we're good here I really don't want to SOG out that bottom crust I want to let it rest at least five minutes before I cut this chicken in half some of the cheese should hopefully set back up just a little bit such that it can stay inside the chicken where we want it okay the chicken's cooked it looks juicy a little bit Oozy and melty world's greatest rice gives a little balance or something that is my first take at the dish and I'm feeling overall pretty good about it things kind of stayed where they needed to be very happy with the color on the second side here also just like happy with the construction and that we didn't lose any cheese we didn't lose any juices to the plate I would be very curious to see my actual score for ingredients because it feels like I'm close I would say I'm out of 90. key elements and the construction of this dish I feel really solid on technique repart dredge butterfly chicken got the rice with the peas right there all shot through it I will go with 90 again appearance I'd go with like 85 on that this looks a little bit Stark even with our best friend the rice and peas still juicy but how'd the cheese melt still going we could be here all day oh wait no okay [Music] flavor wise I want to give this a 90. the texture and the crunch that outer breading shell is so nice seeing this dwarf at this stage so I'm hoping this provides me some Clues oh all right so I gave myself an average of an 89 actual is 84. and where I'm most deficient fascinatingly enough is ingredients I'd say in the second tasting I need to be hyper focused on ingredients and really see if there was some stuff that I missed the first time around hopefully that'll have uh you know positive effect on where I'm coming up short in terms of taste and that'll be the difference I need here foreign [Music] still very chickeny this chicken seems like it was most likely cut on a bias it would just be like you guys to dock 10 points because I didn't cut it at the right angle I absolutely want to taste the breading on its own yeah there's like a flavor upgrade happening here but it's not seasoned bread crumbs I don't think thinking about like a garlic powder onion powder introducing like a little bit of cayenne like this almost tastes like it's got like Creole seasoning in it open this up count slices it seems like two pieces of ham sandwiching a layer of cheese in terms of what's going on inside the chicken I feel good with where I'm at think about ingredients I could be missing it really seems like they've got to be in the dredge I think that wraps up second tasting I have a direction in terms of what I can shift we're going to play around with some bread crumbs so I think I'm good here though okay so things that are going to be the same about this test frankly all of the dredge elements are going to be the same as what I did before uh-oh shell down I tried to get so slick with that second one and there's a shell like all over that pretend it didn't happen let's get the bread crumbs in here I'm sticking with the fine bread crumb the original where it's taking me is a seasoning blend I'm gonna be adding Cayenne paprika onion powder garlic powder it's hard to pick out any one element but it's indicative of like a certain kind of style of cooking where you see these elements often working together is that going to get me my 17 points or whatever I guess we gotta hope a little bit of cayenne not much it's just heat linear in your face paprika good color concentration a little bit of sweetness a little bit of pepper flavor I'm gonna just do the garlic powder I'm going for the onion powder as well brings you a certain amount of umami it just it makes things taste more like themselves salt and the pepper likely candidates for herbs that could go on a mixture like this might be dried oregano or dried thyme I am not going to use that just that like I didn't taste it on its own nothing about the egg element really felt like there's anything going on there you could combine egg and dairy I would kind of argue that it's really the egg that's doing the heavier lift in that equation two pieces of ham [Music] can we go for three too bad we're not getting graded on just awesomeness you know because we could just max out on cheese really knocked hair back you know okay when you pound the chicken you start to compromise the Integrity of the muscle part of this dish is predicated on you maintaining the Integrity of both halves of the chicken while also getting it really thin such that you can get your ham and cheese packaged in there oh geez let's just assume that it's all gonna work out the sort of working assumption here even though I had that tear in the skin the dredge is going to kind of be a little bit of a Band-Aid on it and just give a little bit of separation between oil and then the chicken meat itself but I don't know there's not too much that's leaping out at me in terms of like what the other processes that could kind of come into play here that's all I got for you ready to head to the stove the color to me is like so much more dependent on how much of that spice blend goes into the breadcrumb because it's going to want to get color like fast already the paprika really wanting to pull the color of this really really really down that's annoying oh these pockets that's a little bit of a bummer to me even though I really calm the heat down for the initial you know cook on that first side still could have gone even a bit lower [Music] so we're going to cut the chicken in half on an angle this time how it was done in the original layers are looking good chicken is nicely cooked all right so this is version two this is the one I need to serve to the judge and overall feeling pretty good about it I'm now hoping to get ingredients closer to like let's call it an 85. technique wise I really didn't do much at all different I mean I sandwiched the cheese between slices of ham this time I guess let's go with 87 then I'm very curious to see where the 13 points are coming from that I'm missing here let's say this is a 92 for appearance the enhanced color on the chicken seems correct let's get up to an 85 for taste for this pass my self score for this round is an 87. no more cracks at this and I'm just gonna have to see what the judge says hey Hannah how's it going it's good yeah how do you think you did today it felt like pretty straightforward not too many bells and whistles but maybe there was a whistle that was just kind of far away and I couldn't hear it that well do you have a guess as to the name of the dish or the chef who made it I think this is chicken cordon bleu this dish feels like very kind of like Continental European maybe just like cranked up just a little bit you know mixing a little regular in with the decaf Chris may I present to you chicken cordon bleu by Chef Emeril Lagasse ah Emerald okay okay not bad some kind of like herb situation happening in there I just I couldn't get it you know in terms of the flavor first of all they look very similar in just the color driven both by The Dredge and the fry he layers two slices of ham two slices of cheese and then folds it over I see okay as far as the dredge goes you did great but you're going to be upset to know that it's Italian seasoned bread crumbs stop that's the Progresso oh my God yes it is it tasted so different to me it because you also left out the dried oregano and dry thyme oh and that is what you're seeing these little Woody bits he's starting with a base of Italian bread crumbs and then he's adding these things to it list might be long but the actual seasoning they're part of Emerald's signature original Essence blend [Laughter] interesting oh he looks so young on the label he looks great I mean he really does so once the chicken you know packages were assembled I simply went into a skillet with hot neutral oil okay this might freak you out Emerald uses olive oil does he and butter no true to emeralds more is more style the butter in the oil is introduced twice the scents that I had that this was this classic that a lot of people know the name of but not necessarily what it is was in fact given more of like a regionalized or like a chef specific spin signs were there but they were more subtle than you might think very subtle small bam yeah just like a small bath little bam yeah lowercase b and ingredients you gave yourself an 85 I gave you an 85. okay you got nearly everything how are you to know it was a proprietary blend the heaviest docking of points in the ingredients list probably the breadcrumbs you just plain he uses Italian seasoned yes on technique you give yourself an 87. I also gave you an 87. appearance you gave yourself a 92. and I'm giving you a 94. I docked a few points just on the ooziness of the cheese but the thing is you got the color on the exterior just right it's nearly identical okay before I give you the taste score we're gonna have to taste it okay we're doing emeralds first we're tasting emeralds first oh I must say chicken cutlets need a lot of help so I'm a fan of a proprietary spice blend in this case for that very reason seasoning is like it's like the salt is right there we're tasting yours now look at the layers well seasoned so the salt level is perfect so for taste you gave yourself an 85 I gave you an 88. so that brings your overall score to an 89 so Bravo that's very good job not bad are you happy I'm very happy literally what I asked my daughter all the time sorry are you happy listen I'm certainly happy with how well I did in terms of recreating this dish and getting really close to the original you know all the elements that he was adding in there the emerald Essence like all of that I want to believe that that made it less obvious that it was simply a case of seasoned breadcrumbs and that was that if you had to sum this up in one word bam bam bam sorry that was rice I didn't have salt

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 581,020

Keywords: best chicken cordon bleu recipe, blindfood cooking, bon appetit, chicken cordon bleu, chicken cordon bleu baked, chicken cordon bleu recipe, chicken cordon bleu recipes, chicken cordon bleu sauce, chris bon appetit, chris morocco, chris reverse engineering, cooking challenge, cordon bleu, emeril chicken cordon bleu, emeril lagasse cordon bleu, food, how to cook chicken cordon bleu, how to make chicken cordon bleu, how to make cordon bleu, reverse engineering

Id: ryEoYSeOPI0

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 22 2022