Chicken Ballotine

You’d be hard pressed to present a more impressive main dish than this, served with a Bearnaise sauce you cooked while the ballotine was in the oven. Such a show-stopping dish doesn’t need fancy sides: some buttered peas, some potatoes browned carefully in butter. It’s delicious, rich and sophisticated: absolutely as elegant as beef Wellington or a lobster dish, and much less expensive.

This involves boning out a whole chicken, stuffing it with a carefully flavored filling, and trussing it up into a melon-sized sphere to roast in the oven. Not trivial! But I promise that you can do it, and will be all the more comfortable cutting up a chicken or deboning chicken pieces after you’ve done this. In any case, this is the sort of thing you’ll be very proud to serve.

Once you get the hang of this, you can also shape it into a cylinder (a more traditional shape for a ballotine, and perhaps easier to serve).

An easy and delicious variation on this recipe would be to bone the chicken without scraping off the meat, and then stuff it with a well-seasoned forcemeat of pork sausage, bread crumbs and sauteed onions.

Read this entire recipe before you begin, and make sure you have a clear plan of battle.

Ingredients #

Instructions #

Boning the Chicken #

Your object here is to remove the carcass from the chicken leaving the skin intact except at the openings at the back vent and the neck and along the backbone. The meat of the chicken will go into your stuffing, and the skin will be the container for the pâte mixture.

Here we go: first, for easy removal of meat from the skin after boning, slip your fingers between meat and skin at the neck opening, and loosen skin all around breast, thighs, and as far down the drumsticks as you can – being careful not to tear the skin.

Then, turn the chicken on its side and make a slit down the backbone from neck end to tail end. One side at a time, scrape down backbone, severing ball joints of wings at shoulder and of thigh at small of back and continuing down rib cage and side of breastbone until you come near its edge, at top of breast. Stop! Skin is very thin over ridge of breastbone and easily pierced. Do the same on the other side. Finally lift carcass and scrape close under ridge of breastbone (not against skin) to free the carcass.

To remove the wing and leg bones easily, chop off wings above elbows and chop ball joints off ends of drumsticks. Then remove wing, thigh, and drumstick bones from inside the chicken. Carefully cut and pull as much of the meat as you can from the chicken skin without piercing it.

Sprinkle inside of chicken skin with a little salt and drops of Cognac. Reserves bones and carcass for chicken stock. Dice one breast-meat half and reserve for stuffing garniture, using second breast-half and rest of meat to grind up for stuffing.

Make the Pate Stuffing #

(If you do not have a food processor, grind up the meat, then beat in the rest of the ingredients.) Cut the meat into 1-inch pieces and purée in the processor in 2 or 3 batches. Then return all to food processor, add the rest of the ingredients listed for the stuffing, and purée for a minute or so until finely ground.

Sauté a spoonful in a small frying pan, taste, and add more seasoning (if you think it necessary). Toss the garniture chicken, ham, pistachios, and seasonings in a bowl and let sit until you are ready to stuff the chicken, then fold into the stuffing.

Fill and Form the Ballotine #

Thread your trussing needle with a good 16 inches of string, and you are now ready to make a pouch, with drawstring, of the chicken skin. To do so, sew a loose basting stitch around the circumference of the chicken skin and draw up the two ends of the string slightly to make an open pouch.

Fill the pouch with the stuffing (not too full), pull the string taut, and tie. Dip the cheesecloth square into melted butter, spread out on your work surface, and place the chicken, tie side up, in the middle. Tie the 2 opposite corners of cheesecloth together over the chicken, then the other 2 ends, to enclose the chicken in a ball shape. Cut off extra cheesecloth. Then, always from the central tie, wind successive rounds of string around the ball to make the melon pattern. (Hold one end of string taut as a guideline and twist free end about it to secure each loop as you wind it around the chicken.) The chicken is now ready to roast.

It may be prepared a day in advance and refrigerated; may be frozen but thaw completely (and safely!) before roasting.

Roasting and Serving #

So that chicken will brown nicely on the top as well as the bottom, but so that it will not lose its juices, start it tie side down and turn after 25 to 30 minutes, before any juices have managed to escape from that side.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Set chicken tie side down on a lightly buttered pie dish and roast in middle level of oven for 25 to 30 minutes to brown top nicely, then turn tie side up for the rest of the roasting. Baste occasionally with accumulated fat in dish.

Chicken is done at a thermometer reading of 170 F. (Total cooking time is 1 ½ to 2 hours.)

Remove and let rest 20 minutes. Gently ease off the cheesecloth and string, being very careful not to tear the chicken skin.

Serve hot with pan juices and béarnaise sauce. Or let cool to room temperature, cover and chill; serve as you would a paté, as part of a cold lunch or as the first course for a dinner.

To carve, cut into wedges, starting from the center, as though cutting a thick pie.