A recipe that celebrates chicken and tarragon (poulet a l'estragon)

Hello everybody, welcome back to the channel. This is Stéphane on the French Cooking Academy. Now this week we're going back to a simple one pot family recipe. We're going to make a recipe that many of you have been asking for some time, which is the poulet à l'estragon, which is translated into the chicken in a tarragon sauce. Now tarragon, if you don't know what that is, that is this herb. That's a fresh herb and it's very fragrant. And for the cooking of the chicken it's going to be very standard, one pot. We're going to be using a Le Creuset cast iron cookway here. We're going to sear the chicken and cook the chicken in the mix of brown stock, white wine, cognac and then finish up with some cream. But that's not the important. What we're going to be focusing on is this, the tarragon. If you say to someone I'm making a tarragon chicken, well they're going to be expecting to have a nice flavor of tarragon. So I'm going to try to give you all the tips and tricks you can use to maximize and extract as much flavor as we can from that little bunch of herbs here. And now let's jump straight in. Let's start with the mise en place. If you're a newcomer by the way to the channel, the mise en place is the action of preparing all the ingredients you need before you start a recipe. All right, so I've cut all my vegetables and I've measured my liquid. For this particular recipe we're going to keep the garnish and I've cut my carrots, celery and shallots in a small mirepoix, which is this small cube. The chicken, I've used the whole chicken, cut it into pieces and I've seasoned the chicken bits with salt and pepper and dusted with flour. Why are we doing this? Because the flour is going to help to thicken the sauce slightly and that's why you do this. And the fact of putting it at the beginning and we're going to be able to toast the flour when we try to brown the chicken. For the liquids, dry white wine, cognac, homemade stock. I've used the bone from the chicken to make a short stock, something we've seen in our online course, I'm not going to go over that, and some cream. But that's not the important, like I said. What's important is this, okay, the tarragon. And I'm going to show you a few things we can do with the tarragon to really try to have that maximum tarragon effect in that dish, because this is the star of the show, don't forget that. Now let's talk about how dear tarragon, in French it is called estragon, as you can see on the screen. Now as you can see, when you just buy it from the shop, sometimes it does look a bit rough. It kind of looks like a weed, you say, am I going to eat this? So once you've got this, what we're going to do here, there's two parts in the tarragon, like it's a plant, like parsley, you've got the stem and you've got the leaves. And the action of removing the leaves, and we've seen this before in our course, it's called effeuillé, which means to pluck, basically, the leaves out. So of course, you're not going to eat like these branches, you don't want that in your plate, you can go fast like this. And we're going to try to collect on one hand, sorry, on one side the leaves, and on the other side, we're going to collect the stems here. And the stems is something we're going to be using, and we're going to make a whole bunch of stems tied up together as an infuser. Hold on. So now it looks much better. On one hand, I've got my leaves that I've washed again, I've selected the leaves, and we're going to use this at the end, and for the cream, to infuse the cream, and that is basically the stock. So instead of throwing things away, I'm tying this up with a little string, and I'm going to put this in the chicken when it's going to cook. And now for the chicken. So how do I know if it's good? Two tablespoons of oil, if it makes a noise, it's fine. So skin side down first, and we're going to color the chicken on a medium heat. Now a quick reminder with the chicken, refrain from turning it around as soon as it's in the pan. Leave it in the pan and wait for it to brown, and that can take a good five minutes per side to get a good color. All right, so I'm four minutes in, and let's turn this. You can see the color, and that's on the medium heat. We don't want to charcoal the chicken, and this is why medium heat is always good. So I'm just going to turn them around. If one is not ready yet, I'm going to do another one, and turn them over. Hold on. So that's been another three minutes. I'm just going to take my piece of chicken out, and reserve them on the tray on the side. Okay, look at this. I've got some nice coloring. I'm going to add some shallots, carrots, and a little bit of celery, and mix that with the caramelized juices, and add a little piece of butter. A nudge of butter in there. You can use a tablespoon of oil if there's not enough. I prefer butter, because butter tends to bring some nice flavor, especially with those vegetables. So this is more on a medium to low heat, and don't burn anything. We don't want to burn. We want to let the vegetable sweat a little bit. That's what it's called. Okay, so two minutes after you get some nice color, the vegetables have released their flavor, we're going to start with the cognac, and we're not doing a flambe. Now we're just deglazing, and I'm going to leave this to reduce. All right, so when it's almost dry like this, kind of a syrupy consistency, we're going to add a small glass of wine, and same thing, we're going to reduce the whole lot. So while we're doing this, we're concentrating the flavor. Now in the case of the wine here, what we're going to want to do is to get rid of the alcohol that's in there, and the acidity. So when you reduce, and you're going to remove all that and keep just the good stuff. After a good three minutes, the wine should be ready, but how do you know? Well, basically you take a spoon and you taste. Wow, that mix of cognac and white wine, really good. What was I meant to say? Yes, you taste, if it's still acidic, basically it's not reduced enough. So that's here, that's fine. So I'm going to reduce my heat, and what we're going to do, we're just going to gently take our piece of chicken, and we're going to put the chicken back in the pan like this. Okay, so let's have a quick look at what we've done so far. So we've browned the chicken, we've added the aromatics, we did the deglazing, we add a layer of taste and flavors, and the only taste we've got so far, the meaty taste, is the caramelized juices from the chicken. But this is in no way enough to give your preparation a really good flavor, and this is why you add stock on this. So we don't need to go over the top, I've got basically the same thing about a glass, and I'm going to kind of cover it, I'm going to keep it tight. Don't even cover it like halfway, kind of halfway, kind of a braising technique, and that's it. Then I'm going to add, of course, my tarragon, and try to plunge it in under the sauce there, so it can really infuse and bring some taste. Next, for the seasoning, do you add salt in this? Not at all. We're going to wait towards the end to add anything. If you want to add something, we can add a little bit of black pepper, and that is going to be it. We're going to be cooking this covered. Now let's quickly talk about cooking times. Remember we've got two things in here, chicken breast and the white part, that usually takes 15 minutes to be done. And then we've got the chicken thighs and the legs, they take about kind of 25 minutes. So give or take, because we've browned, we're going to have to leave this to cook for a good, to make sure a good 20 minutes, or 25, but in about 10 minutes, 15 minutes maximum, we're going to have to take all of the breast outside of the pan, otherwise it's going to be overcooked. Okay, so I'm going to put a lid on this and leave this to simmer gently for a good 25 minutes. Now the chicken is bubbling away in the back of my stove, we've added the stalks of the tarragon in the chicken, it's going to infuse in the sauce. And I say sauce, because if you think that the chicken is going to ever taste like tarragon, like the flesh of the chicken, no, that is not going to happen. Even with a marinade, it's extremely, extremely hard to have any flavor going deep inside the flesh of a chicken. So the sauce is what we're going to be concentrating on. So we've got some stalks in the sauce of the chicken, and here we're going to use the cream as a medium to bring some flavor. So we're going to reduce the cream here, like this, we don't have to do it later. And in my cream, what I'm going to add, of course, is this tarragon leaves. And what we're going to be creating here is a very flavorsome tarragon infused cream that we're going to use at the end on top of a big handful of fresh chopped leaves on the chicken. And that's going to bring you that kind of super boost of tarragon at the end, all right? So everything in, low heat, I'm going to reduce this a little bit. My time is up, I've opened the lid and I've removed the chicken breast before, as we said, and I'm going to now reserve all of the chicken bits on a tray, cover with foil, and we're going to start working on the sauce. Now the sauce is going to be made by reduction, so I'm going to get rid of that, a little nice tarragon. He's done his job. I'm going to bring this on a high heat and start reducing. My stock has reduced and now it's time to add some of the cream in. So I've reduced the cream and I'm going to filter it. I don't want to put a tarragon in there. And then again, I'm going to reduce it again further to make sure it's got the right consistency. And now for the final bit. So my sauce is ready. I'm going to add my tarragon, and I have a thinly chopped because my leaves, they were quite, quite rough. And I'm going to keep a little bit for the decoration. I'm going to mix this and then we're going to put the chicken back in. See that color? See that mix of color now? Low heat. And we're just going to put all the chicken back in just to warm it up and then it's ready to serve. And here we are. So I've added the chicken bits back in and we're just going to warm them up. And this is the sauce that's bubbling away here. It's very nice, but we're going to reduce it a little bit. So I'm going to leave this for five minutes and cover it with sauce and turn it around. So it gets some nice flavor and we're going to be able to serve. Let me just try that for the seasoning. That's good. Ah, chicken and cream always goes very, very well together. I love that little intonation of tarragon. I thought it was going to be stronger, but even with this leave, I think after five minutes it's going to develop a little bit more, but it's got that nice kind of subtle intonation in the cream. It's not overpowering at all. And now let's serve while it's hot. So I'll start by putting some piece of chicken on a dish and we'll just pour the sauce over. It's actually quite good. I like these little carrots there. So let me clean the plate a bit and we do the sauce. And here we are. So I've cleaned my plate. So let me tell you, we have not reinvented the wheel over here. And because it's a dish from home, we're keeping the garnish. So I'm just going to try to add a little bit of sauce and I was a bit generous to have sauce in the plate, but that's it. So what we can see here, what I like is that the little, the fragments of colors from the leaves, they're very appetizing and the garnish that we've kept. And you can see these little squares, they act also as a beautiful decoration. So we don't need to add much, maybe a sprinkle of tarragon on top. And I don't think it's even super necessary because there's already plenty on top, but that's about it. That's the way I would serve this dish. So I'm going to do a separate last testing before we go. And to finish off the video, the tasting. So this is my poulet à l'estragon, aka the tarragon chicken. I will add a little bit more sauce because I love sauce and we need to see what it tastes like. And basically that's it. And that's, I think that's a piece of the, the breast that I've got here. So let's see, see the white, nice and moist, still maybe slightly, slightly overcooked, but I think I don't care because that looks so good. I love creamy dish. Let me try that. Oh, it's tender. Oh look, look at that. It's nice. And of course the flesh, there's a little bit of tarragon taste in there, but it's very subtle. It's a very, very subtle experience. And this little garnish on there, you know, it really adds something, but I love the addition of tarragon, which is very, very discreet. Wow. We should do this dish more often. Wow. What a recipe, really impressed with that one. And that completes the recipe for today. And the tarragon chicken. And again, one of these family French recipes, they always, always surprised me because sometimes you start, you think, Oh, it's not going to be really, you know, super special because we have not reinvented the wheel here. And we use simple techniques, but that addition of tarragon with the tarragon infused cream. Ooh, that is something that goes very, very well. But that's it for me guys. I'll leave you with this picture on the screen here. And as always, if you have any questions in the comment section, you can share your recipe on Instagram, hashtag FrenchCookAcademy. And do not forget, we've got our online training program for beginners home cook that is live. And a new course is coming soon on baking essentials. A little announcement there, but more on that later. So take care and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.