I don’t know how to speak or read french but I want to learn it. I know poulet means chicken. I also know that I adapted this recipe form The Modernist Cuisine books. Probably one of the few full recipes in the whole series that didn’t require special equipment like a laser cutter… (ok, an immersion circulator is needed, but a sous vide bath can be improvised at home with a few things too) and didn’t require any less common ingredients. No fancy starches or hydrocolloids. It was very straight forward and when I was done, quite possibly the best chicken breast I’ve had at home or at a restaurant really (maybe I don’t get out much). This recipe in the book is an adaptation of a recipe by Fernand Point. “Fernand Point was a French restaurateur and is considered to be the father of modern French cuisine” I copied this last bit form wikipedia 🙂
Some restaurants have the tendency to serve dry chicken breast. Why? probably because it is better to err on the overcooked side specially when dealing with poultry just for safety reason. It is also very easy to overcook chicken. I overcook chicken at home sometimes, specially if pan frying it. Lean meat dries out fast at high temperature, muscle fibers compress and all the moisture escapes leaving behind a sad and flaky dry piece of meat. Cooking chicken breasts at high-end restaurants for example, is done carefully, by skilled cooks that know how to use a good combination of stove and oven cooking, others probably rely on thermometers or/and immersions circulating water baths to achieve a perfectly cooked chicken breast that is safe to eat and extremely moist and tender. And all of the above can be done at home. Perhaps not for every casual weekly dinner (because gentle cooking means longer cooking times) but for a special occasion? I don’t see why not! Cooking sous vide is one of the gentlest ways of cooking that I know of.
that other cooking blog 