Ok guys, I seriously love bacon. It’s on of my favorite foods and it’s a wonder I don’t weight 800 pounds with how much I eat it. I know bacon doesn’t normally go in chicken kiev, but it actually tastes absolutely delicious. Now, chicken kiev is something I’ve loved but always stayed away from making because I felt like it was really difficult and figured I would just royally mess it up. Seriously though, it’s so easy and it’s the perfect meal to impress your friends with if you don’t want something super complicated.
So I’m going to share with you guys how I make my chicken kiev. There are a few different alternatives that people choose over mine and you can change it yourselves if you think you’ve got a better way, but this is just how I like to do it.
The first thing you’ll have to do is make the parsley and garlic butter. Normally people use fresh parsley and garlic cloves, but if you’re like me you can be lazy and use dried parsley flakes and garlic powder– it has the same effect. Just keep in mind if you do it my way, you’ll need to use fewer parsley flakes than if you were using fresh and more garlic powder to replace garlic cloves. I can’t give you specific amounts for this (I know, I’m sorry, I love them too!) because it really depends on how much butter you want to make and what ingredients you’re using. The good thing about making parsley garlic butter is you can just taste tiny bits at a time until you have it the way you like. One thing to keep in mind as well is if you’re using unsalted butter just add a dash of salt to the butter for taste. Once it’s to your specifications you can either put it straight into the chicken or you can roll it into a little log and refrigerate it to firm it back up again, it’s really your choice. I rolled mine into a log and then chopped off what I needed before I cut the chicken.
There are a few options when it comes to cutting the chicken, the most popular being the butterfly method. Basically, with that you slit open the chicken from the middle so that it opens and looks like a butterfly (or a book), however, I choose to just make a pocket and not cut the short sides open all the way because I find it easier to work with.
Once you cut your chicken just put in the butter and bacon and put in as much as you like, there’s no limit. I find one piece of bacon and four slices off the butter log is sufficient, but if you want more or less go for it. I salute you. Your next step will be to coat the chicken before frying it, which has a few components to it. The three parts of this step are the flour, the egg and the breadcrumbs. You should use plain flour and depending on how many chicken breasts you’re making one or two eggs should be sufficient. Some people add milk to their egg mixture, I don’t, but it’s completely up to you. Finally you should season the breadcrumbs and then you can begin dipping. First the flour, then the egg and then the breadcrumbs.
If you like you can do this two times over if you’re worried about your butter seeping out or just if you want a bit more crunch to it. Finally, just heat a frying pan with a cm or two of oil (preferably vegetable, but olive is fine) and then fry the chicken breast for a couple of minutes on each side.
The final step is to put them on a baking sheet and pop them in the oven for about 10 or 15 minutes at 180°c/350°f. Serve with mashed potatoes or your choice of veggies. And there you go, an easy meal to serve your friends on a night in.
