Stuffed Chicken Serenbe

[GrillinFool]

This recipe is very similar to the one that Chef Christo Gonzales and myself created to win a Chopped style competition held at Serenbe near Atlanta, Georgia. We competed against some of the other Char-Broil All Stars who write for the Char-Broil Live website. What is Serenbe? It’s a 1,000 acre community that shows how an urban development can still sustain the natural greenery of the landscape. It’s also the location of the 2012 HGTV Green Home.
We dined multiple times at the Farmhaus on the property, shopped at the local businesses within walking distance of our cottage, hiked the trails, toured the Green Home, marveled at some of the amazing homes, and most of all enjoyed the natural surroundings including both flora and fauna that Serenbe had to offer. The fauna included horses, cows, pigs, and even a burro or two.
During the Chopped competition, Christo and I were paired together. We were given a bag of ingredients that the other teams got as well which included: a whole chicken, fennel, pineapple, butter, peanut butter, and bacon. In the “pantry” were oranges, lemons, limes, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and onion powder, and the full array of Char-Broil rubs, spices and sauces. This is not the entire recipe of what we used to win the competition, as we made a fennel, orange, and grilled pineapple salad as well. Basically, I can’t remember exactly how we made that, but this is the main course of that dish, so to speak. Here’s Christo and I shortly after finding out we won:

Myself and Christo

And our winning dish:

Chicken Breast Stuffed with Blue Cheese, Bacon and Fennel on a Salad of Oranges, Grilled Pineapple and Fennel on a Peanut Butter Sauce

This is my attempt at recreating that dish, or at least the chicken part. It won’t be easy considering I won’t have a chef of Christo’s caliber standing next to me while I do it.
Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts
4 ounces blue cheese
2 tsp fresh garlic
3 slices of bacon
1 tbsp of fennel, sliced thin and rough chopped
Course salt and fresh black pepper

The Ingredients, at Least Most of Them - Salt, Pepper and Garlic not show.

Start by frying the bacon:

Everything is Better With Bacon

With the side burner on my Char-Broil TRU Infrared, I did this outside, in fact I made the entire meal outside:

Cooking Bacon Outside - No Grease Inside

Time to slice the fennel. If you’ve never had fennel, it’s got sort of a black licorice or anise taste to it. Some of you are wrinkling your nose at the thought of that, but I don’t go overboard with it so it’s only a subtle flavor in the background. Or you could omit it entirely.
Fennel looks a lot like an onion:

Sliced and Chopped Fennel

Don’t let that good bacon grease go to waste. Saute the fennel in the pan with the bacon grease:

Sizzling Fennel

Once the fennel has been sauted for for a minute or so, just long enough to soften it and brown a little, add it, along with the garlic, chopped bacon (only 2 slices, leave 1 for garnish), a pinch of salt and five turns of fresh black pepper to the cheese:

The Stuffing

Then take the side of a knife or the back of a spoon and mix it all together:

Mashing The Stuffing

Here’s what it looks like all mixed together:

Stuffing for the Chicken

Now it’s time to create a pouch inside the chicken. Slice into the side opposite the rib bones:

Creating a Pouch

Create a small hole, but run the knife up and down to create a larger pouch inside, but don’t go to far or you will poke a hole on the other side and thus more stuffing will ooze out:

The Pouch

Then push the stuffing into the cavity:

Stuffing the Chicken Breasts

All three are stuffed:

Stuffed

Now close the gap. One could sew the hole shut, but I didn’t have anything I could use for that so I found some skewers:

Skewers

I scored the skewers about halfway with a knife and broke them in half and used them to close the hole:

The Hole is Closed

Now, you may have noticed that there are only three chicken breasts, but the recipe calls for four. Well, that’s all that came in the package. Here’s how much of the stuffing was left over which would easily fill a fourth breast:

Leftover Stuffing

Now off to the grill:

TRU Infrared

I set up two zone cooking, with heat on one side and nothing on the other. In this case, the two left burners are on and the ones on the right aren’t. With charcoal, put the coals on one side of the grill and have nothing on the other. I have the breast a liberal coating of coarse salt on each side and then place the chicken skin side down on the grill:

Searing the Chicken

Sear the chicken until the skin is nicely browned and then place it on the side with no heat, or in this case, I put it on the convenient upper rack:

I basically indirected them on the upper rack for just short of an hour until they reached an internal temp of around 160 degrees. I used my instant read thermometer check them:

Almost Done

Here I am about ready to pull them, wearing the shirt from the place that I named this dish after:

That's me, the Original Grillin' Fool

I know most of you only want to see pics of the food, but the reason I put this in is because my son, Finnegan, took the picture at the ripe old age of four years old. And he did it with a DSLR, not a little point and shoot. I’m a proud papa of this little fella:

Heir to the Grillin' Empire

Back to the Grillin’. Here you will see that despite trying to close the hole, as fat was rendered out of the chicken, the meat has contracted as the cheese mixture has expanded, so some is lost to during the cooking process. This is to be expected and the cause of the smoke you see coming from the bottom grill grates:

Cheese Oozing

And finally, I pulled them and plated them, giving them a little time to rest so the juices can calm down and redistribute throughout the meat. I topped with the last piece of bacon that I crumbled, but you could also use any remaining stuffing if you like:

Plated

The chicken was juicy, but of course it was, cooked on an infrared grill, the skin was crispy, the cheese oozing and melted and the fennel was subtle but a nice addition to the flavor profile.


If you would like other chicken dishes, click here.
A
lso, you can follow the Grillin Fools on their Facebook page where you can post your grillin own pictures or join the general grillin conversation. Or, you can follow them on Twitter @GrillinFool

 

[Bonewagon]

Beautiful - both the food and the setting.

 

[smokeylips]

Looks delicious:hungry: Bookmarked for later, Thanks!

 

[GrillinFool]

Beautiful - both the food and the setting.

The food was great. The setting looks good now, but in a couple months that green lawn will be brown from the incessant St. Louis sun. I'm enjoying the hell out of it now though....