The first I ever heard of transglutaminase, I thought "that's how to solve chicken kiev." So I made some today. Sorry to say my chicken source was out of whole chicken skins to wrap with, but today was just proving the idea could work. And it worked better than I expected.
Things I'll question or change in round 2:
- larger balls of butter would work fine.
- I wonder if I could find some super-emulsifier that would let me substitute beurre blanc for the butter without separating? That might be a nice update to the dish.
- I really wish there were a better way to pound out chicken. Talk about a technique begging for an update...
- if I'm going to wrap with chicken skin, I'll have to figure out how shallowly to toothpick-poke the ball. It's possible that the raw chicken meat could seal itself back up if I poke too deeply, or it's possible that I could perforate my magic butterball.
- consider wrapping the finished balls in another layer or two of plastic wrap instead of in ziplock bags or with a sealer - the ziplock bags actually reduced the food's contact with the water bath's heat.
1. scoop and freeze balls of compound butter
2. pound chicken flatter than dead
3. Here's my chicken-filling rig. It's a plastic cup, lined-ish with plastic wrap. Drape the chicken, place the frozen butterball, dust with transglutaminase, fold the chicken shut, fold the plastic shut, and twist it into a tight, tight ball. I was a little concerned about air bubbles in the chicken, but it worked really well for home cooking purposes (if I were at a fine dining place, I'd have to worry about an even thickness of chicken throughout)
place butter:
dust with Activa RM:
twist really really tightly (since I had no skin, I skipped the
CS chicken roulade toothpick-poking)
mid-process. (I froze several; I got family visiting in a few weeks.)
I put the balls in ziplock bags, but I imagine another couple layers of plastic wrap, properly secured, would be easier.
Remove from water bath and unwrap. I've had good success breading/anglaising products while they're still warm - although the first layer flour can clump, the warmth of the food helps flour and egg layers stick, so I don't have to rest breaded foods before frying. Otherwise, I am a big fan of resting breaded products long enough to evaporate some moisture from the egg layer.
I almost always use panko, but a smaller bread crumb might actually seem more refined, and is certainly more classic. I have a hard time getting full coverage when breading with panko.
I swear, with panko you only gotta fry for maybe 45 seconds total. It's great.
chicken ball:
beauty shot!
close-up:
