Chicken that actually fits on a sandwich | Garlic and mustard aioli
1,253,169
Published 2022-05-05
**RECIPE, MAKES 2 SANDWICHES**
1 large chicken breasts
2 soft buns (I like brioche for this)
lettuce
tomato
garlic (I do one clove per sandwich)
oil (I like olive oil but it's strong)
mustard (I like dijon for this)
dill pickles
butter
salt
salt
pepper
American cheese (IF you want to do the melt version I show at the end of the video)
Cut the chicken breast in two about 2/3rds of the way up from the skinny tail end. Butterfly both pieces. For a quick 30-60 min brine, dissolve 15g of salt (1 tablespoon of my kosher salt) in one cup (240mL) of cool water, along with an equal quantity of sugar. If you want to brine the chicken longer, like overnight, I'd cut the salt in half. Don't worry if the salt doesn't all dissolve immediately. Submerge the chicken and let brine.
To make the aioli, peel and chop the garlic as fine as you can. Sprinkle on some salt and use the side of your knife to grind the garlic down to a paste. Put the paste in a small bowl, along with a roughly equal quantity of mustard. Stir in oil, a little bit at a time, to form an emulsion. Put in as much oil as the garlic and mustard with emulsify. Watch the video to see how. This sauce will be very strong at first, but will mellow out in time. Make it the day before if you don't like the heat of raw garlic.
Prepare a weight for flattening the chicken as it cooks — I wrap a brick in aluminum foil.
Remove the chicken from the brine and pat it dry. Season it with pepper and anything else you want, but no additional salt. Heat a pan until butter foams in it. Melt a thick film of butter into the pan, place in the chicken and smash down with the weight. Cook until the bottom is lightly golden brown and the chicken seems at least halfway cooked through — 2-3 minutes. Flip the pieces and cover again with the weight. A thermometer isn't much use on something so thin, so I'd just cook it another couple minutes until the inside feels bouncy when you poke it, rather than squishy, and everything looks cooked from the outside. Give it one more quick final flip to kill surface bacteria, because the side you cooked first just touched the brick, which previously touched raw chicken. Take the pieces out to a plate or something — the interior will continue to cook as they rest.
Toast the cut sides of the bun in the pan if you want. Let the bread and the chicken cool for about 5 minutes before dressing the sandwich, because the emulsion of the aioli will break if you get it hot. I do bottom bun, lettuce, tomato, chicken, aioli, pickles, top bun — but you do you.
If you want, you can make a grilled sandwich by placing cheese around the chicken, returning the sandwich to the pan with plenty of melted butter in there, press with the weight until brown on the bottom, flip, repeat, flip again one time (because the brick touched the raw chicken).
All Comments (21)
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Hey all, if you've looked through the comments on my previous video about how garlic works as an emulsifier, you know that learned people have issues with how I explain why the emulsion won't form if there's too much oil. Having reviewed their reasoning and my own, I stand by my characterizations. However, something I should have said in this video is that you absolutely can get away with just dunking in a ton of oil (up to a point) if you use a blender or some other kind of power tool to whiz it up. You'll still ultimately be limited by the proportion of oil and water and emulsifiers in there, but it's much easier to bash the oil into tiny droplets and get the emulsion going if you use a power tool. I think it's really quite easy to make such a small quantity of aioli with just a knife, a spoon and a bowl, so that's what I did here. I like to keep things simple. But you do you. If you want to learn more about these issues, see my previous video, and the comments: https://youtu.be/fqHqEGGz1tE
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The real gem in this video is the “scoring the chicken fibers on the surface “ tip. Absolute game changer, 100/10 Adam.
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the culinary brick is like that one character in a show that appears once a season for no real reason, i love it
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This has probably been said in other comments but: thank you for showing us how to troubleshoot the emulsion and giving us a plan on how to fix it is we put the oil in too quickly. YOU ROCK!!
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I spent like $30 on a grill press and this dude is like "I found this brick"
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This is easily the best cooking channel out there. Zero bullshit, scientific explanations that aren't daunting for a layperson, and you cook food that normal people would actually wanna eat instead of the Instagram-friendly grease mountains other channels make.
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Cool seeing the method for Brioche Grilled Cheese make a return! One of the first Adam videos I ever saw, and feels like a cameo of an old lovable character
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As part of a home university experiment last fall, I had to cook a clay brick in the oven to dry it out (testing the moisture retaining properties of a brick). Afterwards I had the fun idea to use the hot brick to seer a burger on both sides simultaneously, best burger I've ever made indoors.
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A trick my mom taught me: do not stack your slippery vegetables. Similar to how you say to put a slice of cheese between 2 pieces of chicken so they don't slip across each other, it is better to put your lettuce facing one side of bun, and your tomato facing the other side of bun. This allows the lettuce and tomato to grip the texture of the bun each and makes it so the lettuce and tomato aren't sliding across one another. An example assembly to illustrate: top bun, lettuce, chicken, tomato, bottom bun.
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Man, when you put that brick back on the cooked side of the chicken I was like "nooo!!!" Then when you flipped it again I was like "whew..." That was an emotional rollercoaster.
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What a relief to know Adam likes pickles on a sandwich. That means his parents were married and I don't have to un-subscribe.
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0:09 “the breast here is properly sized and shaped” oh Neptune, the ytp crowd is going to have a field day with that one
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A patty "too thin" on a burger is a blessing in disguise, as long as you have enough patties - putting a strong sauce in between two patties is extremely delicious. besides that thank 4 vidya
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It was especially nice that Adam dedicated his attention to a seemingly small detail: the brick touching the raw meat. This kind of attention to detail makes it 100 times more pleasant to watch.
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I struggled to really reduce the garlic to a paste with just my knife, so I would probably try to use a garlic press next time. But by far, the best chicken sandwich I've ever made at home!
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5:30 Adam really rockin those shorts
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Really cool to see how much Adam has learned throughout the years when it comes to cooking
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I won’t lie I got a little bit excited when I heard metric units. This is an American cooking channel I can watch. 🎉
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There's a reason this guy is approaching 2 million subscribers. Thank you for another quality video.
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One thing I really appreciate about you Adam is that you explain why you have made a choice to use a item, like the Brioche buns feel over used here in Melbourne Australia for burgers which I dislike but I am now going to try one on a Chicken burger for the reason you have mentioned. also my cooking has become next level since I started understanding seasoning following your advice about what me and my family like, letting go of traditionally ideas I had about cooking and cooking the food my family will enjoy more. Thanks Adam!
