Chicken Breast Stuffed With Crab Meat

So I'm doing chicken breast and we’re going to stuff it with crab meat and I have some parmesan cheese and all bunch of nice things, so let me go over all the ingredients that I have.

First of all, chicken breast boneless, if you want skinless absolutely you can take the skin off. I kind of like to do with the skin on because of the preparation that we’re actually going to do here. So I’ll not tell you of all about that but let’s go over on the ingredients quickly.

For our stuffing, I have a jumbo lump crab meat. Now, you can use regular crab. You don’t have to use jumbo lump. Jumbo lump obviously a little bit more expensive than just regular lump crab meat, but lump works really well for stuffing. This is usually used for salads but I had this, so I brought this along. And then what I’m going need to do is the crab, you need some eggs, you need some bread crumbs. Again, Panko bread crumbs and I guess some chopped herbs in there. And we need a bowl, so that’s going to be our stuffing.

So why don’t we go ahead and I’ll show how to start that and very important with this, we need plastic wrap because I'm going to show you actually how to cook this in the oven with plastic wrap. And I'm sure you’re going to have a bunch of questions, so a couple of eggs, just whole eggs. I'm going to take this just whisk it up a little bit. And then this is going to be our stuffing. I'm going to take probably about three eggs here, put that in there and then let’s whisk this up. You can use the egg yolks only if you want too if you don’t use the white, but it’s good to use everything, so you don’t have to actually waste it.

We’re done, alright, so I’ve got our eggs. So what we want to do is take your crab meat and kind of flake it in there. So, as you can see here, I flake it, put it all in there, very easy recipe too and you can put your bread crumbs. Now if you want to put some mushrooms in here, please be my guest, go ahead put mushrooms. That is fine you can do that too. Put that in there.

And then some parmesan cheese, real nice. What’s nice with this parmesan cheese is first of all, for the flavor and then the other nice thing about it is when you have your stuffing. It keeps the stuffing nice and moist. With cheese, it doesn’t melt everywhere but it’s just keeps the stuffing nice and moist. A little black pepper and then if you want to mix some lobsters in here. If you want a chicken stuff with crab and lobster, go ahead do that. Here, I got some parsley, whisk that in there. So now we’re going to stir this all this up.

Usually a lot of times what people do to with stuffing, they tend to use a chicken mousse, but you know I know a lot of people at home sometimes you don’t feel like actually making chicken mousse, so it’s easier to make just a nice crab stuffing as such. You can see it’s nice some moist, and when you mix it up what I like about the jumbo lump crab meat is still a nice chunks in there. I mean you have it on the chicken it really makes for wonderful presentation.

So again, let me put over salt, put that in there, and like I said if you want to use mushrooms, I have some mushrooms here. And I’ll explain to that mushrooms to you in a second because it looks kind of funny, but the problem with that is well the good thing it is already cooked. Well, I’ll explain all that to you.

Alright, let’s get this going because this will take sometime. Now plastic wrap, what we’ll do just roll it out, and you have a couple of choices as you can either put the chicken breast down then put it on, but I'm not sure. You’re just going to put my crab stuffing down on it. Do you like that?

You kind of want to cover the whole bottom part of the chicken breast. A good amount there and then I'm going to leave the skin on because I'm going to tell you exactly why because you have a choice. Once it comes out and it’s already cooked you can add and sear skin nice and crispy, or if you want boneless and you want a little bit healthier, you can go ahead and take the skin off.

Actually, before you do that let’s season our chicken. Again, everything has to be season not just the crab, but also the chicken. You can go ahead and season all these chicken right here. And then also you can season on both sides. Do this right before you actually put the crab on it. And just another interesting thing, when you have your chicken breast you’ll see you have a little a little tannin here I usually pull that off because of the stuffing that you put on the chicken. You know it makes it so thick you don’t really need that. It’s just an excess amount of chicken. And you’re going to have plenty of crab on there, so just discard or you can use that for a sauce or something whatever you want to do, fried chicken fingers, whatever you feel comfortable with.

Alright, let’s season this up. You can get from your store. If you want, you can just ask your butcher to give you some nice chicken breast and he can get that few, but that should not be a problem. So what we’re going to do fold this nice and tight, press this down, and then I'm going to fold this over and then roll the chicken.

You can see there is our stuffing with the crab. Roll this a couple of times, again roll it and then cut it off. Again, I’ll show another one. So that is our chicken breast that we have right here and what I'm going to do, I'm going to put in the pan. The pan is off, don’t worry it’s not on. If it’s on right now the plastic will definitely melt, but I'm going to show what we’re going to do here.

Let’s do another chicken breast. Again, put your stuffing down, a good amount. The bread crumbs that are in here is going to help to hold that everything together. And of course, your crab is in there but like I said you can if you want to do lobster. You can do lobster, that’s not a problem. Again, put it nice down, wrap it over, and the first time when you wrap it over, just kind of press it so it’s real nice and tight onto the chicken. Close it, wrap it, there’s your stuffing and just keep rolling it probably like five, six to seven times. You want to have a good amount on it.

Alright, put that down, so there we go. Let me show what we’re going to do with this, set that aside. Now very important, the pan is not hot. What we’re going to do now I'm going to put some water here as such. You don’t have to cover. It does not have to be submerged. Please don’t submerge it, just have maybe like a quarter of the way have some water. And now we’re going to take this, and we’re going to put it in a 400 degree oven.

And then you’re going to go, “Oh, my goodness! Is the plastic going to melt?” No! Don’t worry about it the plastic is not going to melt. Let me explain to you why, the chicken got a lot of moisture on it. The water that we add, add some more moisture. So what happens, the cooking process while it’s cooking is all steaming in the plastic instead of roasting or frying, so what we’re doing right now is we essentially pouching or steaming the chicken. The egg is going to cook. The chicken is going to cook. We’re going to take it off once it’s done and you see how it is going to come out, and the plastic won’t melt.

Now the big thing to remember if you do not put water in there, the bottom of the plastic will melt. And then you’re going to have some, I don’t know, plastic chicken or whatever you want to call it. Let’s go over our sauce ingredients here. These mushrooms I have some shiitake. I have some oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms. These are pre-seared, so let’s go ahead I'm going to sauce ready. We have a pan here add some olive oil. Well, that’s getting hot good it’s already hot actually. Good, so nice smoking point. I'm going to go ahead and dump over like all these mushrooms in here.

Now you’re going to ask me again, why do you re re-sear it? It’s not a question of re searing it. What we do, yes, we re-searing it, but we’re just adding more flavor to it by searing it again, and then we’re going to deglaze it and then make our sauce from this. So get it nice and golden brown, slowly but surely.

Let me explain to our onions that we have. These are Vidalia onions or sweet onions. What we usually do with them, take a slice of if you have Mandoline slice them little nice and thin toast them in salt, and then let them set aside. Set them aside probably for about an hour. It actually essentially cooks the onion. So what it does it pulls out all the moisture out of the onions.

After you’re done, take them, squeeze them real nice, get out all the juices and then we toast on a little bit flour and paprika. And then the paprika is what really gives you a nice color on the onions, and it gets a real nice, crunchy, crispy and they can last for two to three days. This is something that we’re going to use as a garnish on top of the chicken just for some crunch.

Alright, so stir it up real nice. What’s good with these two, I already had some chopped garlic it some chopped shallots mix with that. If not you’re going to add some chopped onions or even garlic to your mixture. You know a lot of times the basis of cooking to is garlic and onions. You have to have that in, it’s an essential. If you’re allergic to it and I feel sorry because the flavor is just really makes a big difference.

Alright, let’s go ahead and season it. Now be careful with this. Don’t season it too far ahead of time because what’s going to happen once we add the cream we actually have to reduce the sauce, and everybody knows as you reduce the sauce it gets more flavor. It intensifies and if you over season it now by the time you have a good news properly to the proper consistency that’s when you’re going to have a problem, and it’s over season and how do you fix that? That going to be a problem, so like I said because you probably is going to start over or add more cream and add more mushroom. That’s one way of fixing it.

One thing I just want to bring up, what I like to do sometimes instead of salt, I used a little bit soy sauce. What’s nice with the soy sauce when you make a cream sauce especially with mushrooms, that soy sauce almost enhances the flavor of the mushrooms and in the cream plus it gives a nice little richness in color. It gets a nice little dark color.

I'm going to get some white wine, any Chardonnay Pinot Blanc. Do not use a late harvest nothing sweet. You just want something like for my self stir that up. There we go, now if you want to use some cognac, if you want some Armagnac, same thing it will be wonderful to do it. f you don’t have anything fancy like cognac or Armagnac, you can use your brandy.

So, it’s very important too once you add your wine reduce it to proper consistency which is almost like dry because you don’t want to have the acidity of the wine or the liqueur taste within the cream. So you want to cook it out for it’s almost a dry consistency. Go ahead and look at our chicken. Chicken is fine. The chicken has probably going to take about a good thing I say 15 minutes just in a safe side to get it in, and to get it right where it’s cooked all the way through because unlike anything else chicken we don’t want to eat it medium or even medium brown.

Well, let’s finish the sauce. This is heavy whip and cream. Add that and we’re just going to reduce it to real nice, thick consistency, and that is going to be the cream sauce for our chicken. Put that in there and you can see just stir it in, and at this point where you want to add some of your soy sauce to really make it just a great flavor.

What you’re looking for kind of is like nice, thick consistency in your sauce, and the cream as you just reduce it will get there by itself. And right at the end what I want to do, we’re going to add some more grated parmesan sauce here. You know actually cheese with the sauce, and so what’s going to be real nice when you have the parmesan in the mushrooms, in the sauce. I mean it’s going to help thicken out the consistency of it, but also the flavor of it just absolutely phenomenal.

Now like I said before be careful not to add too much salt to it as you reduce it, it gets more intensified, and it gets a much saltier flavor. And then also by adding a parmesan cheese obviously, a parmesan cheese salty as well and that’s going to add some more salt here as well. At this point we’re going to attend toour salsa and then I have another pan here. I'm going to do some sauté its finish.

I love using black sauté pans just because they really hold the heat real well, and supposed to like a stainless steel pans, and for this one we can be do the spinach. Get a little bit olive here. I'm going to add that in, not too much. Do you see the pan is already nice smoking point? And then here I have some baby spinach and then very easy. Once your pan is like this you can take it off. Put your spinach in and you’re going to see I'm just going to sear it a little bit because we’re going to just kind of like this spinach well. And then I'm going to go ahead and add some salt just a little bit. Be careful with this especially with spinach.

People tend to over season it. They would put a bunch of salt in it, but you know once the leaves are cooked. It really dissolved. It really comes out of the sauté spinach. Now with pepper, let’s put this back on a heat, and then I'm just going to stir around a little bit. You see it wilts yet. You can flip it if you want to. And then don’t sear too hard or too long. I just want a little like just put it in the pan. I usually put it in and then at this point I turn off the heat, and I just lay it sit because as the spinach sit in there it’s going to keep on cooking. You know that’s going to stay keep on the spinach is going to wilt, so that will be perfect consistency for us there, alright that’s good.

The chicken obviously is still in the oven, and I hope we haven’t burn any of the plastic on it. So, I'm sure we’ll see that on a second. Let’s go ahead and finish our sauce. I'm going to add at the end because I add some chopped parsley. You can add some basil too. You can add some basil if you want or just really nice tarragon, the same thing makes a good flavor on your sauce. Stir that in, all ready.

Now, for the big thing here, let’s see if our chicken came out directly. As you can see, I’ll put it over here and then the chicken is nice and cooked. You can feel because it will be nice and firm and look at our plastic. Our plastic is not burn and that’s why I told you this enough moisture in the chicken and the moisture of the water that you put in the pan that we have the plastic will be fine in there. And Lily what you can do now is just take a knife, and then we’re going to cut the plastic off. Obviously, this is hot so be careful when you do this. Some of us kind of get used to the heat on the fingertips as you cook.

So here you can see real nice. The crab is already stuffed to the chicken breast, and it’s real nice you don’t have to insert a hole into the chicken breast, and then quite the stuffing in. It’s just a different way of doing it. Now, what stunning about the skin you can see the skin is almost cook completely away because it drains there the fat render as it is with the chicken in the plastic wrap. And I like a couple reason one it adds flavor and two it’s nice with it too is if you want to take this and sear this crispy in a sauté pan right now you can go ahead and do that as well.

What I'm going to do I'm just going to cut this chicken just trim it real nice here. The other beauty of this which is absolutely phenomenal is look at the chicken there that you see how moist it is because usually I mean a lot of promise that we have a chicken breast you go to a restaurant or even you’re at home you cook it and the chicken is so dry. It’s almost you can make powder out of it. I always joke and see and it’s real dry you can do chicken powder.

So this is our chicken breast is at there, go ahead let’s put our spinach down. And then as you can see the spinach here just by letting it sit it cooks down by itself because you don’t want to cook it to the point where the spinach is blacken. And that’s when spinach usually tends to taste more like it’s got the iron comes through out of it. So I’ll put our chicken in there and then our mushroom sauce. I'm just going to smother this in there, put it over. If you want to you can take the chicken and put it in your sauce and then stir it around so it really coats very well.

And then let’s go ahead put some crispy fried onions. One thing I love about food, that is consistency is so important and especially when you have the chicken over the sauce. You always need crunch. I am a big fan of crunch food. And you know not necessarily French fries or anything like that, but just something crunchy makes it real nice.

So, here we go there is our chicken breast stuffed with crab meat, our mushroom cream sauce, some sauté spinach and crispy fried onions. So I hope you like this and like I said you can do this with fish if you want to whichever products you want to do it with make sure you wrap in plastic. Always make sure you add the water and you will not have a problem cooking over. So there you go one. Bon appetit, I hope you like it.


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