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

taste

r skills to the test. This is Emeril Lagasse's

chicken

cordon

bleu

. I'm challenging Chris to recreate it. this dish with all the ingredients in a single day you will be able to

taste

it touch it and smell it but at no point will you be able to see this dish at the end of the day we will see your final creation again and I will be the judge for a second, it smelled like discreet Thanksgiving and gravy Maybe uh, I'm getting a supreme crispy texture, there seems to be some kind of lobe of situations and then like another lobe of situation that maybe is divided like a piece of something breadcrumbed over

chicken

, it has to be a nice breast of decent sized chicken that was butterflyed open to become some kind of giant chop, I'm curious what's in here and that thing is ham, it's giving me the city. ham Vibes like a moist brine that's a little smoky, slightly cured or then there's cheese in here too um oh gosh, there's no fancy way to do this, unfortunately it tastes like something Swiss in the realm of gruyere, I think I have a brisket of large chicken and then dredged into what I guess is probably like a flower, egg, breadcrumbs, three-part dredge, fine breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, very brown.

I don't know if I'm getting tons of other flavors here, it's all very well seasoned salt is there and also the black pepper expression, this one actually provides some degree of spiciness, florality, a bit of similar intensity and vibrancy, it's quite interesting However, there really is this quite pronounced Umami quality to this dish. whether it's a pinch of cayenne pepper, a little bit of garlic powder, things that just enhance the overall flavor, but without necessarily announcing themselves, they're just going to stare at me all afternoon, right? Thanks, and then there's this that seems to be a mixture of young peas. and the rice seems quite simple, it gives you one meat plus two types of atmosphere.

The chicken in the presence of ham and cheese has to be chicken

cordon

bleu

. It's a little like country club food. I've never been to a country club, but that's what it is. It's something like what I imagine you'll see on the menu. I mean, I think it works, it's delicious, and it makes sense. I feel good about this first tasting and am ready to make a shopping list. perfect, the key to the whole dish, large, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, we also need a direct option like swiss cheese. I would love a Gruyere option. Urban ham and then AP flour, eggs, fine breadcrumbs.

I would love to try a seasoned breadcrumb option. To make a little bit of a side by side, you know we could almost make our own seasoned breadcrumbs as an option. Consider a little cayenne, maybe even a little paprika, garlic powder, onion powder. Great, I have my ingredients here. It'll be what I use to make my first Tempe dish and, um, yeah, someone will go shopping and we'll be right back. First impressions abroad. There aren't that many things here like this. It's like you know one of those moments where arrogance can easily creep in, you know, you think you've got it in the bag, yeah, Italian style, they never just sent you to the movies, the big container of breadcrumbs Italian style in a spoon, no big picture, we'll make rice and peas and get it. out of the way, then we're going to butterfly the chicken, laminate it with cheese and ham, dredge the chicken and then we're ready to cook honestly, the rice and the peas, just there to round out the chicken, make it so that the chicken not like sitting alone on a plate, did you see that great spatial awareness that keeps peas looking vibrant?

Thaw them in water, so we have a few cheese options. I mean, it all comes back to the cheese in one way or another, so this is the normal Swiss cheese flavor. Okay, a little chalky, it's like Gruyere cabbage, maybe too sophisticated, this already smells like an original gym sock. You know, it's pretty good, but this is a little bit drier cheese, which means it's not going to melt. Remember that cheese, you know, in the original. dish was like a slightly higher water content type than what you'd get here Swiss cheese A from a thinness perspective nice uniform coverage B from a flavor perspective it's pretty smooth look it'll just melt better there's no ham when I mean I mean city ham, as a moist cured ham in brine, with a light smoky flavor and aroma.

I think it's just one slice, so let's talk about the chicken I'm going to open. It's called a butterfly. This is a way to turn something that is thicker into something thinner but still maintain its integrity as one piece. I'm honestly wondering if I need to mash this up a bit because otherwise I'll have a hard time getting all of this in using these. I know what I'm saying, I think we need to make it wider and thinner so that the top of the breast is thicker and the bottom is thinner, this just evens out those two parts.

I want to season the inside of the chicken, the ham. I'm going to add a slight smokiness and a little more intensity of flavor. Cheese will add noticeably lean chicken breast and I can use that so much. This is a pretty thin layer of business. Here we just go with a ham and then Count next time, so I feel pretty good about this. Put this aside and focus on the dredging. Dredging generally occurs in three parts. The first thing the flour does is dry the food and prepare it to obtain a liquid layer. In this case, we will use egg.

The egg has this wonderful thing. The ability to make the proteins coagulate while cooking will provide wonderful levels of adhesion and then the layers of breadcrumbs, so I want to talk about breadcrumbs one more time. I know we smelled Italian breadcrumbs but we didn't try Italian style breadcrumbs. My grandmother used them in everything, I mean I swear she put them in salad dressings, they haven't changed in decades and it has some really wonderful qualities, it's so strong, this is like, whoa, this would be so prevalent like a flavor that would really stand out if it had been in the original dish instead of using it, we're going to use plain fine breadcrumbs, salt in all the dredging elements, something that's well seasoned means that the salt was removed and maximum flavor potential was achieved. of a food black pepper in the breadcrumbs and black pepper and flour.

I'm not going to put black pepper in the egg, it just bothers me to see it there looking all speckled. It has other ingredients that you know in this breading. I'm not convinced we need them right now, so we'll use seasoned flour. I'm going to let it shake off the excess and then in our breadcrumbs, I'm going to start heating up some neutral oil in a pan over here. I think I was tasting olive. The oil in the original neutral oil feels like the safest BET right now, the chicken really needs to be deep golden brown, super burnished and would also like it to have a lot more flavor from having that crispy outer shell color on the first side , the oil was a little.

Hot so my color sucks so I'm just taking the heat down a little bit and hoping the other side can be on my presentation side so I really look like I know what I'm doing. The rice is ready. they're thawed so the color on that second side I would say is much better honestly I'm a little surprised the cheese doesn't start to ooze out in some spots but maybe I didn't use enough but I think we're good here. I really don't want to remove the bottom crust with SOG. I want to let it rest for at least five minutes before cutting this chicken in half.

Hopefully some of the cheese should settle back down a bit so it can stay inside the chicken. where we want it, okay, the chicken is cooked, it looks a little juicy and melty. The best rice in the world gives a bit of balance or something. This is my first taste of the dish and overall I feel pretty good about it. Things stayed where they were. I had to be really happy with the color of the second side here and also happy with the construction and that we didn't lose any cheese, we didn't lose any juice on the plate.

I would be very curious to see my actual score for ingredients because I feel like I'm close, I'd say I'm off 90. key elements and construction of this dish, I feel very solid on the casting technique, dredging, butterfly chicken, I've got the rice with the peas right there, all crossed. I'll go with 90 again. Appearance. I'd go with 85. This looks a little stiff even with our best friend, rice and peas still juicy, but how did the cheese melt? We could be here all day. Oh wait, no. Okay, flavor-wise, I want to give this a 90. The texture and crunch of that breaded outer layer is very nice looking at this runt at this stage, so I'm hoping this gives me some clues.

Oh, okay, so I gave myself an average of a real 89 is 84. And what I'm missing most fascinatingly are the ingredients. I would say that in the second tasting I need to be very focused on the ingredients and really see if there were some things that I missed the first time, hopefully. It will have, you know, a positive effect on what I'm falling short on in terms of flavor and that will be the difference I need here. Foreigner still very chicken, this chicken looks like it was probably cut on a bias, it would be like Guys, subtract 10 points because I didn't cut it at the right angle.

I absolutely want to try the breading alone, yes there is an improvement in flavor here, but it is not seasoned breadcrumbs. I don't think you think of it as a garlic powder onion powder putting in a little cayenne so it almost tastes like it has Creole seasoning open this up and count the slices it looks like two pieces of ham sandwiching a layer of cheese in terms of what happens inside the chicken. I feel good about where I am I think about ingredients that might be missing It really seems like they have to be in the dredge I think this concludes the second tasting I have a direction in terms of what I can change where we are going to play with some crumbs of bread, so I think I'm good here, although okay, the things that will be the same in this test, frankly, all the dredging elements will be the same as what I did before, uh-oh shell down, I tried to be as handy with the second and there's a shell everywhere pretending it didn't happen, let's put the breadcrumbs in here.

I stick with the fine breadcrumbs, the original where it takes me is a condiment. mix I'm going to add cayenne paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, it's hard to distinguish any one element, but it's indicative of a certain type of cooking style where you see these elements often working together, that will give me my 17 points. or whatever, I guess we should expect a little bit of cayenne, not much, it's just linear heat in your face, paprika, good concentration of color, a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of peppery flavor. I'm just going to use garlic powder. onion powder also gives you a certain amount of umami, it just makes things taste more like themselves, salt and pepper, possible candidates for herbs that could be used in a blend like this, could be dried oregano or dried thyme .

I'm not going to use that it's like I haven't tried it on its own, nothing about the egg element I really felt like there was something going on there, you could combine egg and dairy. I would say that it is actually the egg that does the most weight in that equation. two pieces of ham, can we opt for three? Too bad they don't rate us just on awesomeness, you know, because we were able to max out the cheese, our hair really fell back, you know, okay, when you hit the chicken, you start to compromise the integrity of the muscular part of this dish depends That you maintain the integrity of both halves of the chicken and at the same time make it very thin so that you can pack the ham and cheese in there, oh dear, let's assume it will all work out.

Working assumption here, even though I had that tear in the skin, the dredge will be a bit of a band-aid and will just give a little bit of separation between the oil and then the chicken meat, but I don't know, there's not much to tell me. is calling your attention in terms of what are the other processes that might come into play here, that's all I have for you, ready to go on the stove, the color for me depends a lot more on how much of that spice mix Do you use breadcrumbs because you want to get color quickly?

The paprika really wants to tone down the color of this, really, really, that's annoying, oh, these pockets, that's a little annoying for me even. although I really calmed down the heat for the initial cooking, you know, cooking on that first side could still have gone down a little bit more, so this time we're going to cut the chicken in half at an angle, like it was done in the original layers. It looks good, the chicken is cooked really well, so this is version two, this is the one I need to serve to the judge and overall I feel pretty good about it.

Now I hope to get the ingredients closer to something like, let's call it 85. As for the technique I didn't really do much different, I mean, this time I sandwiched the cheese between slices of ham. I guess we're going with 87, so I'm really curious to see where the 13 points I'm missing here come from. Let's say this is a 92 for appearance, the enhanced color on the chicken looks about right, let's go up to 85for pleasure for this pass. My personal score for this round is 87. No more cracks on this and I'll just have to see. The judge says Hi Hannah, how are you doing?

Okay, yeah, how do you think today went? It felt pretty straightforward, there weren't too many bells and whistles, but there was maybe one whistle that was a little far away and I couldn't hear it very well. Do you have an idea of ​​the name of the dish or the chef who prepared it? I think this is chicken cordon bleu. This dish is very similar to continental European, maybe just a little bit improved, you know, by mixing it up a bit so-so. With decaf Chris, may I introduce you to Chef Emeril Lagasse's chicken cordon bleu ah Emerald?

It's okay, not bad. Something similar to a herb situation is happening there. I just couldn't understand it. You know, in terms of the taste, first of all. They look very similar only in the color driven by both The Dredge and frying, he places two slices of ham, two slices of cheese and then folds them. I see that's okay as far as the dredge goes, you did great, but you're going to be It bothers me to know that it's Italian seasoned breadcrumbs, stop, that's the Progresso, oh my goodness, yes, it tasted very different to me because you also omitted the dried oregano and the dried thyme, oh, and that's what you're seeing, these little Woody bits. he's starting with a base of Italian breadcrumbs and then he's adding these things.

The list may be long, but the actual seasoning is part of Emerald's exclusive Original Essence blend, interesting. Oh, he looks so young on the label, he looks great, I mean. it really does once the chicken you know, the packages were assembled. I simply went to a pan with hot neutral oil. Okay, this might scare you. Esmeralda uses olive oil, him and butter? He is not faithful to emeralds. More is more style. The butter is introduced into the oil. double the aromas that it had, that this was this classic whose name a lot of people know, but not necessarily what it is, in fact, it was given more as a regionalized spin or as a chef, there were specific cues, but they were more subtle than you might think very subtle little bam yeah, like a little bath little bam yeah lowercase b and ingredients you gave you an 85 I gave you an 85. okay, you got almost everything, how are you going to know it was a proprietary blend, the heaviest coupling of points in the ingredient list probably the breadcrumbs, just use Italian seasoning, yes, on technique, you give it an 87.

I also gave you an 87. On appearance, you gave it a 92. and I give you a 94. I took it off a Some points just about the exudation of the cheese, but the thing is that you have the color on the outside perfect, it is almost identical, okay, before I give you the taste score, we will have to try it, okay, first we will do emeralds. I'm trying the emeralds first, oh I must say the chicken cutlets need a lot of help so I'm a fan of a proprietary spice blend in this case, for that very reason the seasoning is like the salt is right there, we're trying yours now, look. in the well-seasoned layers, so the salt level is perfect, so for taste you gave yourself an 85.

I gave you an 88. That brings your overall score to 89, so Bravo, that's very good work, no It's wrong, are you happy? I'm very happy. literally what I asked my daughter all the time I'm sorry, are you happy? Listen. I'm certainly happy with how well I did in terms of

recreating

this dish and getting very close to the original. You know all the elements I was adding there, the emerald. Essence like all that I want to believe that made it less obvious that it was simply a case of seasoned breadcrumbs and it was that if you had to sum this up in one word bam bam bam sorry that was rice it had no salt