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***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).
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
6:40
Is that a different kind of tomato, or was it put in the oven?
Could that be why my spaghetti always taste different the day after because of the garlic??? I just thought it was because theres less water
9:03 But the culinary brick is designed to deal with this! Why not use one side for raw meat and the other for cooked?
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.
I think it's amusing that the very "American" paranoia about "bacteria on chicken" are still going strong. I've cooked chicken my entire life without giving that more thought than any other meat (I do meats on different cutting boards than veggies – that's it – and even that is more for avoiding taste transfer than anything else).
SALT YOUR TOMATOES
"Culinary brick".. .hahaahah.. I lmao off, when you brought this out. Hey if it works…? it's not crazy!
how is that a sandwich? thats a burger
The BRICK is back
you could flip the brick
At first I thought it was Adam carrying that box from hello fresh, I was like damn Adam, those shorts are sick. xD
Hey Adam I think you might want to cook one side slightly at first then use the “Ragusea culinary brick of cooking” just because the brick touched raw chicken at the start. Probably nothing to worry about but cooking one side then using the brick would cut down the risk of foodborn illness
Adam is a real alpha. He doesn't like big breasts.
I eat meat but I hate how raw chicken, burger paddies, just meat feel when touching it raw.
Does the emulsion works with confit or roasted garlic ?
I wanted to scream and cry when you mentioned scoring the meat to prevent dry stringy bits when it's cooked. WHY HAS NO ONE TOLD ME THIS BEFORE?!
Remember to salt those tomatoes
One time I laid all the ingredients on top of the lettuce in my burger and when I went to serve the plate, all the burger tower collapsed in a disappointing mess. So ever since, I always lay the lettuce on the top floor.
i love all kinds of cheese but for some reason in my mind cheese does not go on a chicken sandwich
beef yes, fried fish and even ham yes, throw some cheese on there but not chicken
Yum! But I think I'd rather do this with chicken thighs.
You can fix the sanitation problem with the brick by flipping the brick.
This is the only time a breast can be too large
to avoid transferring salmonella from the brick to the cooked side of the chicken, just flip the brick over at the same time as you flip the chicken over. so the side that touched the raw meat doesnt touch the cooked meat
Every week I ask myself what I feel like eating and I always magically find the answer the moment Adam posts his video. Weird coincidence…
Isn't this a burger ? In USA, what differentiates sandwiches and burgers ?
Adam, I have a quick question regarding the garlic as an emulsifier: Does the study you bring up in your Garlic Emulsifier video, or your experiments indicate if cooked (roasted) garlic would also work? I unfortunately will not be able to "for science" it for a week to find out myself.