Thursday, December 10, 2009

TESTING A RECIPE

Tonight we were testing a recipe for Cook's Illustrated, Grilled Stuffed Chicken Breasts. Basically Marty brined the breasts, cut a pocket and stuffed them with herb butter, cheese and prosciutto, and then grilled them. Yes, Marty usually does the main testing of these recipes. He does the shopping, he does the work, and I clean up behind him, and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Here Marty is combining butter, shallots, tarragon. This will go in the pocket of the chicken breast.
Still working with the herb butter mixture.
Prosciutto will be wrapped around the cheese and go into the pocket.

The shallot, herb butter.
Chef Marty checking the recipe. You can see my computer. I was checking my comics and email.
The stuffed chicken ready to be tied up and grilled.

All tied up.

Grilled and resting before being sliced.
The Test Kitchen recipe.

Finished product; grilled chicken, fennel root, salad. I made the salad. :)

The recipe did not have us wash the brine off, so a little salty in parts of the breast. It cooked faster than they said, so the outer parts were a little dry. But if you like the chewiness of charred meat, it really was good. The cheese oozed out and landed in the bottom of the grill. So no cheese flavor. It still was a very good dish. We are trying to figure out how to keep the cheese in the pocket as it cooks. It may need to be trussed and not tied. We would fix this again. Very tasty, and most of the breast was moist.

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