Orange is the New Black: Red’s Chicken Kiev

Red’s Chicken Kiev

Ah yes, Red and her obsession with the elusive prison chicken.

In Season 1 Episode 5, after Piper sees the chicken wandering around the grounds, Red says that this chicken came to her in a dream, wearing a top hat and saying they would be together soon.  You can almost see her salivating over the idea of eating a fresh, real chicken.

Later, once word gets around that there’s a chicken with $1000 stuffed inside it (or heroin, or whatever other rumors are floating around), Red get angry with Piper for announcing the chicken to the entire prison and spouts out:

“All I wanted was to eat the chicken that is smarter than other chickens and to absorb its power and make a nice Kiev.  But, oh well.”

Best line in the show?  Quite possibly.

The recipe, however, was not very successful for me even with real chicken (in method, not in flavor – it was delicious!).  I definitely blame myself for the failure here, though.  I don’t think it’s because of the recipe.

The first step is to make the butter that goes inside the chicken breasts.  It just involved combining softened butter, garlic, lemon juice, tarragon, parsley, salt, and pepper.  Once it’s all mixed, it’s shaped into a rectangle, wrapped in wax paper, and refrigerated until solid.

The next step is to pound the chicken with a meat mallet until it reaches 1/4 – 1/8 thickness, and this is where I messed up.  I didn’t have a meat mallet, so I used the bottom of a wine bottle instead.  Eventually I got tired and decided it was “flat enough.”

Nope – not flat enough!  This one step affects the rest of the meal, so don’t do what I did and give up early!

When the butter is solid, it’s cut into four long slices (or two in my case, since I cut the recipe in half) and rolled up inside the chicken breasts.  This step right here is why you need a super flat piece of chicken!  Mine was too fat still, so it wouldn’t stay rolled up and I wasn’t able to fold the ends over the butter, as described in the recipe.

Next we bread the chicken.  The rolled up chicken is first dipped in flour, then in egg, and finally a panko breadcrumb mixture (combined with tarragon, salt, and pepper).  Then they go in the fridge for a few hours.

Finally, the chicken breasts are fried in oil about a 1/2 inch thick until cooked through.  This should have taken about 10 minutes, apparently, but it took me more than double the suggested time to get rid of all the pink…again, most likely because the chicken wasn’t flat enough.

And I forgot to take a picture of the final result!  Sorry guys – I think I was just frustrated with the fact that I messed this one up.  But one of them came unrolled, and the other did surprisingly stick together but the butter melted right out of the middle during the frying phase since it wasn’t properly packed into the breasts.

Taste: 9/10

Even though the butter didn’t stay inside either of the chickens, it was really good.  But then again, how can you go wrong with fried chicken?

Difficulty: Difficult

The difficult parts include pounding the chicken flat enough, rolling the butter up in the chicken tight enough, and frying the chicken without it opening up.

Even with your chicken pounded to the correct thickness, the other two steps would still be a challenge…but definitely easier than if you have a fat chicken breast like I did!

Cost: Average

You’ll need to purchase chicken breasts and panko bread crumbs.  Other ingredients include garlic, butter, lemon juice, tarragon, parsley, flour, eggs, and vegetable oil.

Suggestion:

Keep pounding that chicken breast with your meat mallet until it’s actually 1/4 – 1/8 inch thick.  The thinner the better!