Airline breast = fanciest chicken white meat

***RECIPE***

Start with any whole chicken. Remove the wishbone. Remove the wings at the elbows, leaving the humerus bone (drumette). Cut through the meat down to the humerus all the way around the bone, scrape the meat up toward the elbow and remove.

Cut the skin connecting the breast to the leg quarters. Starting at the sternum, peel the breast meat off of the carcass, exposing the still-connected shoulder joint. Cut through the shoulder and the breast should come away with the skin and humerus intact. I like to remove the "tenderloin" muscle that runs underneath the breast.

If you want, you can brine the chicken. Mix up a 3-10% salt solution, depending on how long you plan to brine — less salt for overnight, more salt for an hour or two. I like to put in a little sugar too. Soak the chicken in the brine and blot dry before cooking.

If brined, the chicken probably won't need any salt on the surface, but you can season with herbs and spices, etc. Put a film of oil in a COLD pan, lay the breasts in skin-side down, turn the heat on medium and let the skin brown slowly. When they're ready to flip, consider scraping under each breast with a. rigid spatula first to keep the skin from sticking and tearing.

As the cut side of the chicken browns, you could throw some crushed garlic cloves, woody herbs (thyme, rosemary, etc), and butter in the pan to baste. Either baste and flip the breasts continuously in the pan until they're cooked through, or transfer the pan to the oven. When I'm cooking for myself (and am therefore not that worried about germs), I cook the thickest part of the breast to 155ºF/68ºC, but when I need to be safer I take it to 160ºF/71ºC. It'll go up a few more degrees as it rests.

Remove the chicken to a plate, dump out the garlic and other solids and deglaze the pan with water or wine to make a sauce. Reduce until almost dry, turn off the heat, wait for all bubbling to stop and stir in as much cold butter as you want.

Slice the chicken and serve sauce on top.

[FabianQ]

Adam pouring the oil down the drain like he’s renting this home or something 💀

[Bloodray]

I realized, that why I love Adam's cooking videos is not just the food. I did make a couple of his recipes, and I loved them, but what I realized is he gave me courage to just be myself, have my own ideas and cook things my way instead of sticking to the recipe so strictly. Heck, I even modified his recipes to my own taste.

[psilocyber_]

I made this for my mother as she is constantly doing all of the housework and cooking for the family and I wanted to take care of her. She said it was the best food she has had in a long time and was very pleased. Thank you.

[SarahMaeBea]

This kind of retro luxury food is fascinating to me. As a kid, I had corn chowder once at a hotel restaurant and thought it was the most glamorous food. (I'd love to see you do a chowder recipe in the summer)

[davouchi]

I love his no fuss, no bullshit. Straight in to the content attitude.

[chaosmuffinminecraft]

I was just telling my wife how smaller is better for boning work, thanks Adam for confirming!

[ck]

Adam, this is a great one! As a dark meat fan, rarely has a chicken breast looked so damned enticing as what you've made here. I'll be trying my own "airline breast" as soon as possible. Also, I really have to say I love your style of dropping critical little bits of info here and there that really help people like me improve my overall cooking. Those nuggets that you can apply everywhere are some of the best things about your videos.

[dajohnnyboy]

Adam: for your champ, cook the sliced green onions beforehand in the butter for the mashed potato; softens the onions and lessens the bite of allium. Us Irish will throw a handful of lightly cooked cabbage or curly kale in there too, alongside a handful of chopped parsley.

[newchannelization]

Washing the metal shavings was the thing I was waiting for, most people never think about those shavings

[Fiebich]

On the subject of white meat, i've figured out that you can save an over cooked piece of chicken by massaging a little bit of butter into it. Yeah, everything is better with butter, I know, but it goes beyond just standard butter factor and improves texture a bit as well.

[spicerack]

I grew up on this airline chicken. My dad was an executive for Pan American Airways and thus, traveled the world in the Golden Age of Flying, in the '50s - '60s. This chicken dish was perfection and difficult to choose between that and the Chateaubriand. Catering for Pan Am was by Maxim's of Paris, can you believe it and really was divine. At 10 y.o. I could tell the difference of a great or mediocre Bearnaise Sauce. Life went downhill after the Pan Am years! Heh!!!! Do make this dish. You'll love it, a low cost, high value meal for Valentine's Day to impress.

[pixeltheragdoll]

I just wanted to compliment you on how clever you are in sneaking in those adverts. Honestly, if you are especially clever with it, I leave them to run. I feel you've earned it. I just thought you should know your efforts don't go unappreciated 😊

[Beryllahawk]

Nice work on showing how to cut up a whole bird, that's excellent info. I will note one thing - if you're planning to cut up whole chickens frequently (and by frequently I mean at least three times a month) it is WELL worth getting yourself some poultry shears just to make certain parts of disassembly easier. The good ones are 100% dishwasher safe and they make going through the joints on the bird EXTREMELY EASY. You'll still need a good knife for the remove of breast from ribcage, of course, but for myself, I don't think I'd ever bother cutting up a whole bird if I didn't have my shears... Others may differ with my opinion but I'm very interested in minimizing my opportunities to injure myself in the kitchen >.>
I really like the bone sticking out, it's almost cartoonishly adorable and my husband and I both quite enjoy being "barbarians" who pick up our meat with our fingers, hehe (well, when there's bones to use thusly).

[gluteusmaximus]

"It's from the days when we associated air travel with luxury not misery."
This made me laugh quite a bit

[TheMimiSard]

The phrase "Here's how I'm making mash these days" implies Adam changes his method every so often, which means he doesn't get locked up in one method. Keep allowing your cooking to change!

[U.Inferno]

Watching Adam dump the grease into the sink sent off so many alarm bells in the back of my mind.
Probably fine since it's not like... frying oil
Edit: Yeah probably not. Dont dump that much fat out kids

[darold]

French pan sauce - a whole episode please. :) This one looks great. I've been working on them as recipes and try freehand sometimes.

[mandobrownie]

At 6:53 you put your cooking fat down your sink drain. I've always been told not to do that, but I haven't done it so I don't know if it's bad for my drain. Moreover, I don't know if it's annoying for water treatment facilities. It'd be cool if you did a podcast segment or video about disposing of cooking fats!

[matthewlazaric]

Hi Adam, great video as usual. I want to say I'm confused by what you said about using high heat will cause the chicken skin to stick. One of my staple one pot meals is Kenji's one pot chicken and with that he recommends starting at high heat to prevent sticking and I've never had issues. Any idea what's causing this opposite advice?

[rickybryan]

I like how you keep your meals really simple. Meat, starch, on veg. One trap a lot of Western cuisine has fallen into is everything having LOTS of ingredients. Like a good stir fry can be beef, brocholli, rice and sauce. It’s all in the cooking and quality.