Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Kitchen Diary 2012 - Chicken Breast Strips Poached in Butter


We were listening to Splendid Table a few months ago and there was this dude who was talking about how butter is an awesome poaching medium, and he suggested poaching shrimp in it. Oh god, that’s dirty. And yes, we will try it…but not quite yet. The host – the dreamy and honey-voiced Lynne Rosetto Kasper – said, “oh, could you do that with strips of chicken breast…?” And this has stuck in our minds. So we thought, why not?

Because of emulsifiers in butter, additional water can be added to it without it breaking. We didn’t want to use the whole cube for this because it’s a one-time deal, so we thought we’d extend it with some milk. Probably an okay idea, as long as you’re not using mustard. The vinegar in the mustard will cause the milk to curdle. Not dangerous, but it looks kind of nasty. We kept the pale, silky strips of butter-poached chicken in the fridge and snacked on them occasionally before adding them to a salad.

The way we made it:

Take a partially frozen boneless, skinless chicken breast and slice it very, very thinly. In a small saucepan, melt 3 Tablespoons of butter and add 3 Tablespoons of water, a splootch of Dijon mustard, a smashed garlic clove and some milk. Warm until hot but not simmering. Poach strips of chicken in batches.

Please
: skip the milk part. Just go for more butter.


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