Chicken Ballotine Class

Anyone with basic kitchen skills and a paring knife can make this elegant dish.

Most chickens are Industrial Food and consumed without a second thought. By preparing them in this way, you'll start to think a bit differently about something that most of us take for granted. Equally important, you can make the experience of eating one even more pleasurable.

Ballotine is a cooking term used to describe a method of cooking and presenting meat. "Ballotine" in French means parcel or bundle, and that's what this is -- a bundle of meat.

The meat you start with must be boneless, and flattened -- it can be meat, poultry or fish.

The stuffing can be anything, including other meat.

From Julia Child's My Life in France.

The pièce de résistance of our meal would be a ballottine of veal: veal that has been stuffed and rolled into the shape of a log and served hot with a luscious sauce.... we prepared an elaborate veal forcemeat that included quite a generous bit of foie gras, mushroom duxelles, Cognac, Madeira, and blanched chard leaves which would be used to make a nice pattern. We then stuffed the veal with the forcemeat, tied it up ever so neatly in its clean poaching cloth.... The ballottine, poached in the spectacular veal stock and then allowed to linger in it a while to enhance the flavor, was an immense success with its truffled sauce.

Sounds delicious, but how to do it? The internet has plenty of links. Each gives clues on how to proceed, none are complete. Jacques Pépin covers it in some detail in his Techniques, though many key steps are glossed over.

After making this many times, I decided to get a group together and share the technique.


The Plan

The day before the class, Heidi watched me de-bone a chicken that was then filled with Art's ground pork stuffing. The result is the ballotine in the picture at the top of this post; the centerpiece of our shared meal the next day. Heidi made a roasted mushroom and spinach stuffing that, once chilled, would go into the chickens prepared by everyone.

A small group gathered at Art and Heidi's place. After a brief overview, Heidi began work on her chicken and I hovered in the background while the others watched. Once Heidi finished her ballotine, everyone else started working on theirs. I moved around, helping as needed.

As soon as each person finished, we put their chickens in plastic freezer bags and set them in the refrigerator. Then, after cleaning up a bit, we all sat down to a casual meal featuring the ballotine prepped the previous day. Before they left, everyone picked up their chicken, ready to be roasted and enjoyed at home.


The Pictures











Thanks to everyone you see above: Patricia, Rob, and Heather; Heidi for all the beautiful pictures, and Art who was, as usual, on.


As part of making the ballotine, you'll learn how to remove both leg and thigh bones from the chicken leg without breaking the skin. That lets you make stuffed boneless leg quarters.


The tastiest part of the chicken is the leg and thigh. This technique strips out the tendons and ligaments from the leg quarter, making it a joy to eat.




Another variation splits the chicken in half, keeping the breast meat attached to an over-sized piece of skin, which is used as a wrapper. Then debone the leg and thigh and use those scraps of meat to make a forcemeat that is placed under the excess skin. Truss and roast.

Sounds complicated, too bad I don't have any pictures. In actual practice it's not so hard.

Here are a few more links if you want to do some reading.

Boneless stuffed leg quarters.

Make a galantine, which is poached in stock, and served cold.

If you're ambitious, try it on a goose.

More info on the next class, here. Hope you can make it.