The Chicken Recipe Everyone Is Making Right Now

Chicken au poivre has been all over my social media feed lately but the question is, is it actually worth the hype? Today we're making it from scratch my way and I'm going to show you guys how to get perfectly juicy chicken and a peppercorn cream sauce that tastes like it came from your favorite steakhouse. Meet me in the kitchen, let's make it happen. Now a lot of the recipes that you're going to see online are using the whole chicken and they're spatchcocking it. For simplicity's sake today we're using leg quarters because one, they're easier to use and two, they're super inexpensive at the grocery store. We all know that the grocery bill is crazy high right now. This recipe has been super viral lately and for good reason. It's actually really good. So its origin is French so au poivre basically means with pepper. It's a peppercorn cream sauce that is traditionally made with steak and online it's been made with chicken lately. That's when it started to go viral. There's a few tweaks from like a traditional au poivre recipe that you know you're seeing online. A lot of it is obviously the chicken but then also the use of sherry instead of brandy or cognac. So with the chicken preparation what we're going to do first is dry brine it. So we're going to add a heavy application of salt on both sides of the chicken and then pop it in the fridge uncovered for 2 to 24 hours. The longer the better. If you can go at least 24 hours you're going to get some great flavor into the chicken. So we're going to go ahead and coat this in the salt. Get it on a sheet pan. Get that into the refrigerator for at least a couple hours if you got the time. The dry brining technique is going to do a couple things. One most importantly is going to add a lot of flavor. The salt is going to penetrate the meat all the way down to the bone. It's also going to dry out the skin which is going to help us get crispy skin. Something that a lot of times you're not getting with roast chicken at home. I'm going to show you guys how that works too so stick around. Alright guys so next up it's time to prep our ingredients. Now au poivre again means with pepper. So the star of the show or at least one of the stars of the show is the actual whole peppercorn. A lot of people have never cooked with a whole peppercorn. You're just used to grabbing a cracked black pepper out of the pantry or your cabinet or your spice rack. God knows how long that's been in there. You'll be surprised how much more flavor you get with the whole peppercorn. It's super fragrant. You get it fresh from the store. It's going to add a lot more flavor than if you just use the jar stuff. So one of the ways that you can do this is with a mortar and pestle and kind of grind it up the old-fashioned way. A lot of people don't own those so I'm going to show you guys a quick little pro tip. Put it in a ziploc bag, grab a rolling pin, a cocktail muddler, something heavy, a mallet, meat tenderizer and just crack the peppercorns. You still want them to be nice and coarse so just you know take your time. So the goal is for the peppercorns to be nice and coarse like you see right here. Sometimes you can buy them like this but I like the whole peppercorn because you know that it's going to be super fresh when you crack them like this. There's going to be a lot of extra flavor, a little bit of heat even. A lot of people don't really associate any kind of heat or spice with black pepper but when you do this method you'll find that there is just a little bit. So you're going to need a couple tablespoons of that. We're also going to go ahead and dice up some shallot and some garlic and I like to add rosemary to mine. Sometimes you see it in the recipe with au poivre, sometimes you don't. This is kind of leftover from the steak concept but rosemary plays really nicely with chicken as well. Quick reminder guys, this recipe and all of my recipes can be found at MrMakeItHappen.com. You can also hit the QR code right here. Next up my friends, it's time to sear our chicken. Now we have a nice large pot here. It's already heated. We're going to add some olive oil or avocado oil, just enough to coat the bottom. We got our oven preheated to 400 degrees. The goal now is to develop some nice color on the chicken. We want to get that skin nice and crispy. So we're going to sear it, place it into our casserole dish, and then pop it in the 400 degree oven. Skillet's hot. In goes the chicken. You want to press down to make sure it's making good surface area contact with the skillet. That's going to develop that nice golden brown color that we're after. It's also going to help crisp up the skin. It's going to add flavor, texture, and color. All of the things. Don't overcrowd your skillet. We're only going to go in with three of our four for now and do the last one solo. Probably could have did two and two but you could fit three in this size skillet. Now you'll notice that we only use salt so far and the reason for that is because we want to develop perfectly golden brown and crispy chicken skin. If you add the whole seasoning cabinet on your chicken and then try to sear it, a lot of that stuff's going to burn up at the bottom of your pan. We're going to add plenty of seasoning and flavor later but salt only for now to develop that golden brown consistency and the crispiness on the skin is what we're looking for. You want to take your time. Don't rush this step. Give it a good, you know, four or five, maybe even six minutes per side until it's evenly golden brown and crispy. Then we'll flip it over, get the other side a little bit of love, and then put it in our casserole dish. Then we'll season it a little bit more but during the searing process you don't want to go too crazy on all the extra spices because a lot of that stuff's going to burn and we need this fondant flavor at the bottom of this skillet to help our au poivre sauce. So that's exactly what you're looking for right there, nice golden brown, not burnt, even color, perfect. All right so this is what we're after, this nice crispy golden brown chicken skin. Now I know you're thinking, oh you're just going to dump sauce on top of it, which would be true but it will crisp back up during the last few minutes of the cooking process in the oven too. All right so at this point we're going to go ahead and hit it with just a little bit of seasoning. We got my AP seasoning and some buttery garlic pepper. I'm going to get it a nice light coat and then pop it in the oven at 400 for about 10 to 15 minutes while we get started on our sauce. All right people, bonus recipe time. We're going to plate this chicken up with a nice rice pilaf, super simple. We got some onion already started here and some olive oil. We're going to saute that until it's translucent. As soon as the onion gets a head start, we're going in with a good tablespoon of garlic, garlic paste, fresh garlic, whatever you got and then we're going in with some dried herbs. Just use a blend that you like. You can go with thyme, some oregano, basil, parsley, really any kind of dried herbs, whatever you enjoy are fair game here. I'm going to mix that in and one of the keys to making a good rice pilaf or any seasoned rice really is to get the veggies started, the aromatics in there, get the flavor building and then we're going to toast the rice. So one cup of parboiled rice is going in and kind of like how you would start a risotto. We're going to let the rice kind of bloom a little bit and absorb some of that flavor. So just give that a mix, a good two or three minutes of toasting the rice. We're also going to add some seasoning. I'm using low sodium chicken stock which allows me to add a little chicken bouillon powder to the party. Totally optional and I'm also going to add some AP seasoning, salt, pepper, garlic, onion powder, a couple other spices, nothing crazy. I'm going to give that a couple minutes, mix that in. Then we're going in with two cups of chicken broth and you're going to cook rice the way you always cook rice. Per package instructions, 18 to 20 minutes or so and this will be done. The chicken is in the oven cooking. By the time the chicken is done, this will be done and it'll be time to plate everything up. All right, next up is time for the sauce. We went ahead and drained off some of the oil that was at the bottom of the skillet but we're leaving all that fondant flavor that you see here down at the bottom. I'm going to add in a couple tablespoons of butter and begin to melt that. Then we're going in with our peppercorns and our rosemary, our shallot, our garlic. I'm going to toast those items down here in that butter and flavor. Then we're going in with some sherry wine. That is a new adaptation for the chicken recipe. Traditionally, au poivre is made with brandy or cognac which honestly is my favorite way to do it but sherry actually does work really nicely with the chicken so we're sticking to the viral recipe today. A few other tweaks that I'm making but we are rolling with the sherry. I'm going to melt this butter and then in goes the peppercorns and rosemary first. Immediately smelling amazing. I love the rosemary and butter combination. It's giving steakhouse vibes right out the gate with aromatics. Then we're going in with the shallot and the garlic. Get all of that in there and just let that sweat down for a second. Then we're going in with some Dijon mustard. Classic French technique for this recipe. It's going to add a little bit of bite that's going to offset the creaminess that you get from the heavy cream sauce. While that is sweating down, we're going to begin to season a little bit. I'm going in with some chicken bouillon powder. Amplify the chicken flavor a bit. Add some MSG. Then we're going to go in with some AP seasoning as well. You could keep it real simple and go salt and pepper if you want to. No big deal. Heaping tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Oh Jesus. Overzealous Dijon mustard. Once you get the Dijon worked in, we're to deglaze with the sherry. Just like a quarter cup to a half a cup depending on how much of that flavor you want in there. If you're avoiding wine completely, I feel you, just use a little extra chicken broth which is the next item going in. The last item will be heavy cream. All the specific measurements and ingredients will be listed for you at MrMakeItHappen.com. Cook that sherry off. Then we're going in with some chicken broth. So we're going to bring this to a simmer. Then add in the heavy cream. Bring that back up to a simmer. Taste it. Make sure the flavor is right. And then just let that simmer for a few minutes and reduce and thicken up. And that is going to be where we're going to pour over our chicken and let the chicken cook in this delicious flavorful sauce that we have. Basting the chicken every 10 to 15 minutes until the chicken is done cooking. Which at 400 degrees, really probably 30 to 45 minutes depending on how large your pieces of chicken are. You want to make sure that the chicken, if you're using leg quarters like I'm doing today, technically they're safe to eat at 165. I find that the texture is a little bit better at 175. So that's what I'm shooting for today. 175 degrees internal temperature. All right, we'll let this continue to reduce a bit. It's getting pretty close to where I want it. We're going to taste it. Make sure the flavor is right. Always taste as you go and adjust the flavor to your preference. If you want it a little saltier, add some salt. You can add more peppercorns. If you want to really spice it up, you add red pepper flakes. It doesn't need anything. The rosemary, the pepper, I mean it tastes like steakhouse flavor components. It's just, it's really good. It's rich for sure. So I wouldn't necessarily add this to the health food column. But overall this dish is really nice. Comes together pretty quick also. Obviously the salt brine adds some time, but if you can do that the night before you can throw dinner together in less than an hour and have something really special for the family. All right people, there you have it. Chicken au poivre my way. Budget friendly, super delicious, and pretty easy to make. Without further ado, it's time to dig in for the taste test. But before we do that, please take a quick second to subscribe to the channel and make sure you hit that bell to enable notifications as well. All right folks, time to dig in for the taste test. Chicken first. Gotta get protein in. That's incredible. The peppercorn is fresh, adds that little bit of a bite. You can taste the Dijon cutting through some of that cream. Incredible. So good. Rice, perfect. Perfect pairing right here. You can serve this with a little salad, little green beans, whatever your favorite vegetable is. I'm about to eat this right now.