Triple the finger lickin’ chicken

By Lynn Bain

Apr 23, 2024

Last month, LYNN BAIN brought us crunchy coatings. This month it’s all about fabulous fillings.

The April recipe focused on the 'pure' chicken with an Indian-spiced crunchy coating. This month we look at (other) flavours that may go with a chicken thigh fillet — something on the inside rather then the outside.

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When discussing this, my husband suggested that this was rather like the thought process of making a chicken sausage — so why not just incorporate a chicken-based sausage into the chicken fillet.

Simply remove the thigh bone from the underside of the fillet and replace it with sausage mince.

With the sausage mince comes all of the herbs and spices that you may associate with your favourite chicken snags/bangers.

Additionally, for a little extra punch of flavour, add a layer of chicken liver pate between the sausage mince mixture and the chicken. This is similar to a Beef Wellington, but with a moist chicken thigh fillet instead of beef eye fillet — and not wrapped in pastry either.

I think you get the idea — the chicken skin remains to form the 'wrap' which gets crunchy roasted in the oven during the cooking phase of this recipe.

Handy hint one: Importantly the shape of the boneless chicken thigh fillet lends itself perfectly to this technique — and the chicken skin crisps ever so perfectly in a fan-forced oven. However you can use drumsticks if you are careful with the removal of the bone(s). I'll suggest that chicken breast is too 'dry' for the approach that I've shown in the recipe. The moisture inherent in a chicken thigh is an agent for bonding the 'parcel' together.

Handy hint two: You can take the skin from a chicken breast and use it to wrap around the entire parcel. This alternative gives you an option — such as when you might need to wrap a larger parcel, or fully/double wrap. (Again, I think you get the idea.)

Handy hint three: You can use any of your favourite — to personal taste — chicken sausage variety. Just squeeze the filling out of them onto your cutting board/preparation surface. You can even make up your own chicken mince mixture as an alternative to the sausages. There's a squeezing hint in the recipe/method notes.

Handy hint four: You could use either home-made chicken liver pate or shop-bought in this recipe. If you have bought pate that has the gelatine topping, please discard this topping and only use the pate itself.

Before you start, preheat your oven to 180°C. This recipe will serve two people.

CHICKEN LAYERS

INGREDIENTS

2 boneless chicken thighs (skin on)

2 chicken (and herb) sausages

2-3 tbsp chicken pate

2 tbsp canola cooking oil

2 tbsp butter

3 cloves garlic

METHOD

Step 1: Remove the chicken sausage mince from the sausage casing. You can either do this by running a knife down the sausage and spooning the filling out or simply squeezing the sausage meat out of the casing (a bit like a tube of toothpaste). Here's the tip that you were promised — when squeezing the mince out of the sausage, pull the skin backwards away from your 'front' fingers that are holding the mince exiting end of the sausage. Doing this controls the 'delivery' more accurately.

Step 2: Lay the sausage meat filling from each sausage on a work surface as shown in the photo. Now place small pieces of the chicken pate along the length of the top of the sausage meat.

Step 3: Place the boneless chicken thigh (skin side up) over the sausage meat/pate.

Step 4: Now tuck the edges of the chicken thigh under the sausage meat/pate. You may wrap the chicken skin around the entire parcel, however, the chicken thigh doesn't have to meet completely under the sausage meat/pate. Just tuck the chicken thigh skin under so that it makes a neat little parcel.

Step 5 (not shown in a photo): Next, roughly chop the peeled garlic cloves. In a microwave-proof jug place the butter and chopped garlic. Microwave until the butter has melted. Or you can do this in a small saucepan heated over a low heat on the stove top.

Step 6: Place the chicken thigh ‘parcels’ into a lightly oiled ovenproof baking dish and pour half the garlic/butter mixture over the skin of one of the chicken thigh.

Step 7: Pour the remainder of the garlic/butter mixture over the skin of the other chicken thigh.

Step 8: Put the chicken thighs into the preheated oven for about 30 minutes (depending on the size of the chicken thighs). The skin on the thighs should be golden and crispy when the 'roasting’ is completed.