Chef Reveals Secrets Behind Fine-Dining French Chicken Dish: Poulet Presse For A Bistro Crowd

For this video I filmed the process of making a chicken dish I put on the menu at my last job. We gave it the nickname “chicken brick” or “chicken lasagna” but really it was a take on the French dish called Poulet Presse. I wanted to do something slightly more elevated but adjusted for a higher volume crowd, and this is what I came up with. It takes a lot of prep work but the pick-up is not very complicated and the results are very impressive. And once you get the hang of the process it is easy to scale up to larger amounts.

The Chicken Press is a dish of boneless chicken, usually involving a mousse which is cooked en masse and then pressed with a weight overnight while it cools. The result is a compacted product with an attractive inlay of ingredients held in the mousse center. For our version we used boneless, skin-on chicken thighs for the outer layers with a mousse in the center containing mushrooms, shallots, and chives.

Ingredients:
-2.5 kilos (approx 5.5 #) chicken thighs, bone out, skin on
-salt, pepper, pinch of sugar
-550 grams chicken trim (from the 2.5 kilos of thighs)
-40 grams egg whites
-170 grams heavy cream
-40 grams white wine, port, or apple cider
-11 grams salt
-1 bunch minced chives
-1 small diced shallot
-100 grams re-hydrated dry morels (or other mushrooms)

1. Trim any bone fragments or cartilage from the chicken thighs. Also trim any stringy bits of skin and cut some of the meat away to make them evenly flat. Discard skin and bone but save the lean meat. Place all trimmed thighs in a tray skin side down, season with salt, pepper and a little sugar. Let stand uncovered in the fridge overnight.
2. From the leftover trim, weigh out 550 grams. Using a powerful food processor, blend the chicken trim with the salt for 10-15 seconds. Now with the machine running, slowly add the egg whites, alcohol or cider, and cream. Remove from the bowl of the machine and mix in the mushrooms, shallots, and chives. Set aside in the fridge.
3. Line a half hotel/gastro pan with plastic wrap, leaving enough extra to wrap the contents completely. Lay in the cured chicken thighs skin side down until the bottom layer is complete. Next, sprinkle the thighs with a bit of powdered gelatin.
4. Remove the mousse from the fridge and spread over the thighs evenly, then sprinkle with another layer of powdered gelatin. After the gelatin is applied, layer in the top layer of chicken thighs skin side up, taking care to make sure the skin covers the gaps as best as possible. With the layer complete, bring the plastic wrap up over the chicken and wrap snugly so there are no gap. Place gastro/hotel pan in an oven set to steam function at 60 degrees celcius for 2 hr 45 minutes – 3 hours. After cooking, remove from oven and drain excess water. Place even sized pan over the chicken and then set something heavy in the top pan to keep the chicken mass weighed down overnight in the fridge.
5. The following day, unwrap the chicken presse, trim the edges to make sharp lines, and then portion to your needs. Once portioned you can cook the servings in a non stick pan and then finished in the oven. The chicken is already cooked so you just want to make sure the middle is hot and that you get the skin as crispy and golden brown as possible.

hello and thank you for joining me after a couple requests we are taking a look at a recipe that I put on the menu at my previous job we had a few nicknames for it usually either going by chicken brick or chicken lasagna the inspiration comes from the classic French dish pulle plus not to be confused with the duck press or pulle bless this is a method of cooking boned out chicken usually including a mousse and then putting a weight over it to compact it the end result can be used in both hot and cold applications today we are going the hot route and make sure to stay tuned after the recipe to hear a joke from the very comedically talented Amal it should be noted that I got inspired to do this dish from watching Canadian chef Ron McKinley share his process for making it on social media he showed a general overview and I said hey well maybe I can figure this out I rewatched his videos a few times cross reference some other recipes and eventually came up with something I really appreciate that Chef McKinley Embraces the philosophy of sharing culinary Insight in the name of preserving knowledge and techniques and I made this video with that same spirit in mind so let’s get into it first let’s start with an overview of the whole process for this version of the dish we are layering chicken thighs into a gastro or hotel pan with a chicken mousse filling in the middle this chicken mass is then cooked cool cooled pressed with weight and then portioned and finally heated and crisped up to Golden Brown on the pickup now let’s go into each step also if you’re following along from spizza you will notice that I’m making a half recipe and a half gastro so don’t be alarmed that my numbers are not the same as for the recipe in the binder so get yourself a cutting board and we are using bone out skin on chicken thighs and even though most of the work has already been done for us we need to go through each of these quickly for some trimming the folks at the processing plant are only Human After All and they’re going through a lot of chicken daily so there is the occasional bone fragment or bit of cartilage that needs to be cut away and yes I know that we all love that oyster but for this process the less loose bits we have the better so I go ahead and cut that off but don’t worry it won’t be wasted and with that in mind the size of these thighs in these packages varies pretty widely so I also like to level them out by cutting away some of the meat this will just make everything more uniform when layering obviously you will cut more away from the bigger pieces than the smaller ones some might already be flat enough and again don’t be worried this trim won’t be [Music] wasted I also like to cut off any stringy bits of skin and having a little buffer of skin is helpful when when layering but you only need a little slack so I’ll also trim off excess amounts of that and I usually determine this by just making sure the muscle is laying Center in the skin and then I make the cut this is a lot of words but ultimately it’s pretty simple once you get into the Rhythm right so now we have all our thighs trimmed up nicely and have them laying skinside down in a tray and I have two separate trim boxes one with just pure meat that we will use to make the mousse and another with skin bits and little bone fragments that we can’t use but before we get to the mousse we need to cure or dry brine our chicken thighs I have a mixture here of salt and black pepper with just a little bit of sugar in there and we just season those thighs generously and don’t worry make sure to send that salt and pepper container to the dish pit afterwards to avoid cross contamination and then we let those thighs sit in the fridge in a perfect world you will let those go over night but if you are a chicken pressed for time and have to make it in the same day just let them sit for as long as you can manage before finishing the project here are some other thighs that were done the day before and you can see that that pink color of the flesh really pops a little bit more now and they have a slightly tacky surface which also makes layering a little easier but moving on to the mousse so I’m using the good trim from the thighs but I won’t need all of it just 500 50 g the rest can be used for family meal and I botched the shot here a little bit but this is 170 G of cream 40 G of egg whites 35 G of apple cider normally it is white wine or port wine but some of our cooks are Bangladeshi and I wanted to make sure they also got a chance to try this dish we also have 11 G of salt we’ll also add in some mushrooms after the mousse is Blended and because we are using dry mushrooms we need to hydrate them in some tap water for about 15 minutes I soaked more than I needed for this recipe because we will be making more chicken lasagna soon enough and these will hold in the fridge and then it’s time to blend get your favorite food processor I know which one I love the most and then start by getting the chicken in there with the salt and we let that run for about 10 seconds I think adding the salt early helps to break down the protein structure and then I’m not sure how important the order is here but I normally go in with egg whites first then the wine or the cider and then finish with the cream and I usually stop three times when adding the cream and give that top handle of the machine a spin to make sure everything is blending nicely and this machine is powerful so don’t feel like you have to go too long and you don’t want the friction to warm up around the blade this looks pretty good here and so we transfer that mix to a bowl to mix in our last ingredients this is 100 G of those rehydrated Morel stems some sliced chives which Amal was in charge of cutting so excuse any wacky pieces I think she was more focused on getting her comedy performance ready we also have here some diced shallots and then we just mix that all up nicely and now our mousse mixture is ready and we can go on to layering so I have here a half gastro or half Hotel you can certainly scale it up to a full pan if that makes more sense for the volume you are doing and what we want to do is line this with the most magical of kitchen Products plastic wrap and working with plastic wrap always drives me a little crazy because you just kind of have to accept that it’s not a perfect operation just make sure you have some slack there are no gaps and that the wrap is mostly flush with the pan that looks okay and now we can start the layering I’m just taking the thighs and laying them in the pan skinside down and I try to get them in there to fit together as nicely as possible just try to make sure you have the skin laying completely flat and not curling up into the meat and look out for any last little bits of cartilage that you may have missed during trimming but that is basically it now before we add our moose layer I just want to hit the thighs with a little sprinkle of powdered beef gelatin Chef McKinley actually uses a bit of meat glue but that isn’t available here so I felt this was the next best thing it just provides a little bit of insurance when it comes to the tightness of everything and now it’s time to add the mousse and spread it out as evenly as possible with a spatula once you have that nice and level we just want to sprinkle the top with a little bit more of that powdered gelatin and then to finish we just layer in the rest of our chicken thighs skin side up this time obviously unless you trim those thighs really precisely to the point where they are all the exact same size you just have to accept the fact that things are going to fit together a little imperfectly but after making this so many times I can tell you that it really all works out in the end with our top layer complete I just go through and adjust the skin a little bit here and there to close any gaps and then I wrap everything up with the plastic wrap film flaps I’m making sure things are a little snug and pulled together but just slightly we aren’t making a sausage here but that’s about it now you can cook this right away if you need to but if you have the time I find it nice to let it rest in the fridge under something heavy for the night but this can be skipped it’s most important that the chicken gets pressed overnight after cooking but do both if time allows so now it’s time to cook and we want to set our fancy OV to 60° C at Full Steam I had it on combination in the video here here but fixed it after I stopped recording and we let that go for 2 hours and 40 minutes and after that your chicken is cooked you will usually have a bit of water in the pan so I like to drain that before the chicken goes into the fridge to cool and now it is time for the overnight press I get a clean Pan the same size as the one that it was cooked in lay it over the chicken and then weigh it down with whatever works best for you we found these 10 L containers of oil oil or vinegar work nicely and now just let it go the next day it is time to portion and serve don’t feel like you have to slam the pan to get it out usually you can just lift it out easily with your hands now we remove the plastic wrap and I will peel away any of the gel juices from the outside of the chicken because they will make things a little more difficult when we go to Brown and then it is up to you on how to portion this since this was the main component for our chicken dish we go pretty big but if you have other things on the plate or if it is part of a larger tasting menu you could certainly go smaller than this but now they are ready for service see how nice that looks with the mousse layer in the middle and all the bits of mushroom and chive visible and just for the sake of seeing it all come full circle I will show you how we would serve it at the restaurant with cauliflower puree Jew and all I start with a non-stick pan just under medium heat I add the chicken brick and let it start to render and brown once it starts to sizzle and sputter I give it about a minute on one side then a minute on the other side don’t panic if you lose a tiny little piece of chicken then I flip it back to the side I started with add my cauliflower and then I put the whole pan in the oven set to 200° C dry heat and Let It Go for about 4 to 5 minutes during that time I clean up the mess on my stove and then enjoy a bit of chai that Joy made for us very tasty and after that time the pan comes out of the oven and the presentation side should now look beautifully browned as should our cauliflower so on the plate we have a cauliflower puree which we make a simple circle with and then the chicken goes down in the middle the fettes are placed around the chicken and then we sauce with a nice simple chicken Jew and garnish with a bit of water Crest fairly simple plating but this is a high volume Nordic beastro so you have to keep things pretty easy but there you have it from start to finish thank you for joining me today I hope you enjoyed this look at the way I approach doing something slightly elevated for a higher volume application this is by no means a definitive way to do this dish there are so many parts of this process that you could do differently you could be really OCD about trimming the thighs so that they fit in the pan perfectly you could change up the mousse recipe and use different alcohols you could fold different ingredients into the mousse to match the season or to fit your taste better you could portion and plate it completely differently take the technique and run with it I’m sure you will come up with something tasty and if you like this video you can show me by hitting the like button and please please subscribe we are so close to 1,000 now I can almost taste it you can also click the Bell icon which helps keep you updated on new videos some people are subscribed but then miss when new videos come out so you might find this feature helpful and of course feel free to drop a line in the comments section and tell me what you think of the recipe in method or ask any follow-up questions until next time cheers and now as promised a joke from a in the 700s comedy club what do you call a well balanced horse stable [Music]