Learning to Make Stuffed Chicken Breast

“This is my advice to people: learn how to cook, try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun”.

– Julia Child

The other day I was thinking, now that I have some extra time on my hands due to the Covid-19 restrictions I should work on improving my culinary skills. I haven’t entirely given up cooking over the past several years but since Kim and I got married I haven’t cooked much. It’s not that I don’t want to cook, it’s just that Kim is so much better at it than I am. The meals that I prepare just cannot compare to the amazing food Kim puts out, and, to be perfectly honest, I’m intimidated. However, I decided that it was time to stop hiding behind my fear of not being good enough and just get at it. My food doesn’t have to compete with my wife’s, it just has to be eatable. Besides, I have a great teacher at my disposal, I’d be crazy not to take advantage of that.

So, Tuesday past I decided I wanted to make stuffed chicken breast. How hard could that be? I had a basic understanding of the concept: make a stuffing, stuff it the chicken breast, bake the breast in the oven, serve. Nothing to it, right?

I mentioned to Kim that this was what I wanted to prepare, and she asked me what kind of stuffing I was considering. I replied that I wanted to do something Greek. She asked about ingredients. I told her: red onion, tomato. red pepper, spinach, Kalamata olives (of course), and feta cheese. She told me that that was good, “what about a side”? I told her that I hadn’t gotten that far in the planning stages yet. She made some suggestions, we discussed them, and decided on couscous and grilled asparagus. Then I made a suggestion, “How about I look after the chicken breast and you look after the sides?” (I felt that learning to make the stuffed chicken breast would be challenging enough for one day). She acquiesced.

I went to the kitchen to prepare the chicken breast and the ingredients for the stuffing. I didn’t refer to a recipe as I already knew what I wanted for my stuffing, but I did have to research how to stuff the chicken, how to cook it, and for how long. I could have just as easily asked my wife how this was done but I had already handed of the responsibility for the sides, I wanted to at least do the chicken myself. I looked up the process in one of Kim’s cook books.

I am going to paraphrase here but this is basically how the instructions went. ‘Place chicken breast between heavy plastic and flatten with a kitchen mallet until they are the same thickness’. So far so good. ‘Butterfly the breasts…’, What? Then it went on about how to put in the stuffing and fold the chicken around it. ‘Place the individual breasts on aluminum foil, brush olive oil on top and bottom, add one tablespoon of chicken broth then form a pocket from the foil around the breast, and bake at 450 for twenty minutes’. Okay, I could do this. I moved on to prepping the stuffing.

I had most of my ingredients chopped up and ready to go, only the red pepper and feta remained, when Kim came into the kitchen. She looked at all my little piles arrayed on the cutting board and asked, “may I make a couple of suggestions?”. Now, when Kim asks if she can make a couple of suggestions it means that I am doing something wrong, or, at the very least, there is a better way of doing what I am doing. As much as I wanted to prepare the chicken by myself I knew that it was most likely in my best interest to accept the help.

The first thing was the spinach. I had about a half cup of chopped spinach on the cutting board. It looked like plenty to me. I was wrong. Kim explained that spinach cooks down and needs to be sauteed first, and that what I had there would go away to nothing. She then took a small pan, added some oil, heated it up, and tossed in about three cups of spinach, that quickly reduced down to less than what I had in the first place. She took the spinach off the heat and put it in the mixing bowl that I had waiting on the counter. I started to add my other ingredients. Kim stopped me at the red pepper.

“What are you going to do with that?”, she asked. “Dice it up and put it in the bowl?”, I asked timidly. “You can do that if you like but it will come out much nicer if you grill the red pepper first. It will make it sweeter, and give it a nicer texture”. This sounded good to me so I cut the pepper in half, cleaned out the seeds, put it on a baking sheet with a little olive oil, inside of pepper down, and gave it 15 minutes. This is not the best way to grill a pepper but I felt it would be the easiest way for me. It grilled nicely.

When I took it from the oven I was told that I had to remove the skin. “Do you know how to do that?” Of course I didn’t. Kim explained that all I had to do was put the hot pepper in a plastic sandwich back, seal the bag, and let it sit for a few minutes. So I put the pepper in a baggy and set about mixing the other ingredients, while Kim began preparing the sides. When I had everything mixed together except the pepper I removed it from the bag. That little trick work like a charm, the skin just slid off.

I was about to dice the pepper when Kim stopped me again and told me that it would work better if I were to cut the pepper into thin strips, which I did. Then I added the strips to the rest of the stuffing. It looked good, smelled great, and tasted fabulous. Kim quickly commandeered half of it for the couscous. “Trust me, you have more than enough there to stuff three chicken breast and adding some of the stuffing to the couscous will make it amazing, and tie the whole meal together”. I must have looked like I was about to question her because she finished with, “just go stuff your chicken”.

I picked up the first chicken breast and began trying to cut a slit in the side of it. It was only a matter of seconds before I heard, “What are you doing?” Being unsure as to how to respond I quietly answered with an “I don’t know?”, as if I were asking her a question. “Can I show you?” she asked as she took the knife and the chicken from my unskilled hands. “Like this”, she said, drawing the knife in smooth, long strokes along the side of the breast. The breast responded by opening up perfectly, like the wings of a butterfly. A light bulb went on in my head, ‘so this is what it means to butterfly a chicken breast’. I was so excited.

“let me try, let me try”, I exclaimed. Kim handed over the knife and I pick up the second breast. The technique looks much easier than it is. “STOP!” I stopped. After taking a deep breath Kim calmly said, “let me show you again”.

Now, two breasts down one to go. Surely after being shown twice I could manage the last one myself. I did. It was a struggle, and the end result was far from perfect but I did it myself. “This one will be mine”, I said to Kim, holding up the slightly mangled breast. “Yes it will”, she agreed.

Stuffing the breasts was much easier and went very quickly. I then laid out three sheets of foil, one on top of the other. I put a drizzle of olive oil and a teaspoon of chicken broth on the first sheet, placed the chicken breast on top, then spread a little oil over the breast. Kim had to show me how to form the first pouch but after that I easily did the other two. I put the pouches on a baking sheet and placed them in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. With the chicken cooking in the oven Kim finished the sides while I set the table and poured the wine.

A little later, as we ate what turned out to be a delicious meal, I recounted all the things I had learned that day, and there were quite a few. I felt pretty proud of myself. I can’t wait to learn to prepare something else. I’m not sure that Kim shares my enthusiasm.

Cheers!

Stephen