Recreating Emeril Lagasse's Chicken Cordon Bleu From Taste

Hi, I'm Hana,

I'm in the BA test kitchen

about to have a super secret conversation

about Chris Morocco.

Once again, we're putting Chris's supertaster abilities

to the test.

This is Emeril Lagasse's chicken cordon bleu.

I'm challenging Chris to recreate this dish

with all of the ingredients

in just one day.

He'll be able to taste it, touch it and smell it,

but at no point will he be able to see this dish.

At the end of the day,

we'll come back to see his final creation

and I'll be the judge.

[dramatic music]

For a second,

it smelled like low key Thanksgiving and gravy, maybe.

Huh?

I'm getting supreme crispiness.

There seems to be kind of like a lobe of situation.

And then like another lobe of situation

that has maybe divided

like one piece of something.

Breadcrumb coating on chicken.

It's gotta be a pretty, you know,

decent sized chicken breast that was butterflied open

so that it becomes like one sort of giant cutlet.

I'm curious about what's in here.

And that thing is ham.

It's giving me city ham vibe.

So like a wet brine,

that's a little bit maybe smokey,

lightly cured,

and then there's cheese in here too.

Um.

Oh God.

It's no elegant way to do this, unfortunately.

Tastes like kind of like a Swiss,

something in like the gruyere realm.

I think we've got a big chicken breast,

it is then dredged in what I'm assuming is

probably like a flour, egg, breadcrumb,

three part dredge,

fine breadcrumb,

salt, pepper, deeply browned.

I don't know that I'm getting tons of other flavor here.

Everything's really nicely seasoned.

Salt is right there.

And also the expression of black pepper,

this one, that's actually providing some degree of heat,

florality,

a little bit of like intensity and vibrancy.

It's pretty interesting.

However, there really is this quite pronounced

umami forward quality to this dish.

There could be a pinch of cayenne pepper,

a little bit of garlic powder,

things that are just boosting overall flavor,

but without necessarily announcing themselves.

[cutlery clattering]

Just gonna watch me all afternoon,

all of you, aren't you?

Thanks.

And then there's, this.

Seems to be a mixture of baby peas and rice.

Seems pretty plain,

giving you a meat plus two, kind of vibe.

Chicken in the presence of ham and cheese

has got to be chicken cordon bleu.

It's a little bit like country club food.

I've never even been to a country club,

but like, this is like,

kind of what I imagine you're gonna see on the menu.

I mean, I think it works.

It's delicious and it, and it makes sense.

I feel good with this first tasting

and I'm ready to make a shopping list.

Right back at you.

Perfect.

The key to the entire dish:

large boneless skinless chicken breasts.

We also needs like a straight up like Swiss cheese option.

I'd love a gruyere option.

City ham,

then AP flour,

eggs,

fine breadcrumb, plain.

I would love to check out a seasoned breadcrumb option

to do a little side by side on that.

You know, we could almost make our own

seasoned breadcrumb as an option.

Consider a little bit of cayenne,

maybe even a little bit of like paprika,

garlic powder, onion powder.

Great.

I've got my ingredients here.

That will be what I use to do my first attempt at the dish.

And yeah, somebody's gonna go shop and we'll be right back.

[dramatic music]

First impressions,

there's not a whole heck of a lot here.

Like this is like, you know,

one of those moments

where hubris can easily come in, you know,

thinking you've got it in the bag.

Yeah. Italian style.

You never just got sent off to the movies,

the big container of Italian style breadcrumbs in a spoon?

No?

Big picture,

we're gonna do rice and peas.

Get it out of the way.

Then we're gonna butterfly the chicken,

laminate it with cheese and ham,

dredge the chicken,

and then we'll be ready to cook.

Honestly, the rice and the peas,

it's just there to round out the chicken,

make it so that the chicken's not just, like,

sitting there alone on a plate.

[pot lid clangs]

Did you see that?

[Cameraperson] Yup.

Great spatial awareness.

Keep your peas looking vibrant,

defrost them in water.

So we've got some cheese options.

I mean, it all comes back to cheese somehow or another.

So this is regular Swiss cheese.

Flavor's okay.

Little chalky.

This is like the cave-aged gruyere,

maybe too fancy.

This already smells like funky gym sock town.

You know?

It's pretty nice.

But this is a slightly drier cheese

which means it's not gonna melt as well.

Remember that cheese pull, you know,

in the original dish?

It was like a slightly higher kind

of water content that you'd get here.

The Swiss cheese,

A, from the thinness perspective,

nice even coverage,

B, from a flavor perspective being fairly mild,

C, it's just gonna melt better.

All right.

Now, ham.

When I refer to city ham,

I'm talking about like a cured wet brined ham,

lightly smokey flavored and aroma.

I'm thinking it's just one slice here.

All right, so let's, let's talk about the chicken

which I'm going to open up.

It's called butterflying.

This is a way to turn something that's thicker

into something thinner

but still maintain its integrity as one piece.

I'm honestly wondering if I need to pound this out slightly

'cause otherwise I'm gonna have a hard time

getting all of this in there using these,

know what I'm saying?

[pounding chicken]

I think we need to go wider and thinner.

So the top part of the breast

is where it's gonna be thickest

and bottom thinnest.

This just evens out those two parts.

[pounding chicken]

Wanna season the inside of the chicken.

The ham is gonna add light smokiness

and a little bit more intensity of flavor.

Cheese is gonna add fat,

chicken breasts, notoriously devoid of fat,

and can use that so much.

This is a pretty thin layer of business here.

Just go one ham

and then we'll actually count next time.

So I feel pretty good about this.

Set this aside and focus on dredge.

Dredging usually happens in three parts.

First thing, flour,

dries out food,

preps it for getting a liquid layer.

In this case, we're gonna use egg.

Egg has this wonderful ability

to have the proteins coagulate as it cooks.

It's gonna provide wonderful levels of adhesion.

And then your breadcrumb layer.

And so I wanna actually just chat

about the breadcrumbs one more time.

I know we smelled the Italian breadcrumbs,

but we didn't taste the Italian style breadcrumbs.

My grandmother used these in everything.

I mean, I swear, she put it in [beep] salad dressing.

These have not changed in decades

and it has like some really wonderful qualities to it.

It's just so strong.

This is like, whoa!

This would be so prevalent as a flavor,

it would really leap out

if it had been in the original dish.

Instead of using that,

we're gonna go with plain fine breadcrumbs.

Salt in all of the dredging elements.

Something that's well seasoned means salt.

Wrought out and realize the maximum flavor

potential of a food.

Black pepper in the breadcrumb

and black pepper in the flour.

I'm not gonna put black pepper in the egg.

Just kind of upsets me to see it in there,

looking all speckly.

I have some other ingredients, you know,

in this breading mixture.

I'm not convinced that we need them right now.

So we're going seasoned flour.

I'll let it drip off any excess.

And then into our breadcrumb.

I'm gonna start getting some neutral oil

hot in a skillet over here.

I don't think I was tasting olive oil in the original.

Neutral oil feels like the safer bet right now.

The chicken really has to be deep, golden, super burnished.

And also like it's gonna get so much more flavor

for having that crispy outer shell color.

[pan sizzling]

Color on the first side,

oil was a little bit hot

so my color kind of sucks.

So I'm just calming the heat down a little bit.

And I'm hoping that the other side

can be my presentation side

so I actually look like I know what I'm doing.

Rice is done.

Peas are defrosted.

[pan sizzling]

So color on that second side I'd say is like way better.

Honestly, a little bit surprised

that the cheese wouldn't start to ooze out in spots,

but maybe I didn't use enough,

but I think we're good here.

I really don't wanna sog out that bottom crust.

I wanna let it rest at least five minutes

before I cut this chicken in half.

Some of the cheese should hopefully set back up

just a little bit,

such that it can stay inside the chicken where we want it.

Okay, it, the chicken's cooked,

it looks juicy.

A little bit oozy and melty.

World's greatest rice.

It gives a little balance

or something.

That is my first take at the dish,

and I'm feeling overall, pretty good about it.

Things kind of stayed where they needed to be.

Very happy with the color on the second side here.

Also just like happy with the construction

in that we didn't lose any cheese,

we didn't lose any juices to the plate.

I will be very curious to see my actual score

for ingredients because it feels like I'm close.

I would say I'm at a 90.

The key elements and the construction of this dish,

I feel really solid on.

Technique:

three part dredge,

butterflied chicken,

got the rice with the peas right there,

all shot through it.

I will go with 90 again.

Appearance:

I'd go with like 85 on that.

This looks a little bit stark,

even with our best friend, the rice and peas.

Still juicy.

[Cameraperson] How'd the cheese melt?

Still going.

We can be here all day.

Oh wait, no. Okay.

Flavor wise, I wanna give this a 90.

The texture and the crunch

and that outer breading shell is so nice.

Seeing the scores at this stage,

so I'm hoping this provides me some clues.

Oh, all right, so I gave myself an average of an 89.

Actual is 84.

And where I'm most deficient,

fascinatingly enough, is ingredients.

I'd say in the second tasting,

I need to be hyper focused on ingredients

and really see if there was some stuff

that I missed the first time around.

Hopefully that'll have, you know,

positive effect on where I'm coming up short

in terms of taste.

And that'll be the difference I need here.

[dramatic music]

Still very chickeny.

This chicken seems like it was most likely cut on a bias.

It would just be like you guys to dock 10 points

'cause I didn't cut it at the right angle.

I absolutely want to taste the breading on its own.

Yeah, there's like a flavor upgrade happening here

but it's not seasoned bread crumbs I don't think.

Thinking about, like, a garlic powder, onion powder,

introducing like a little bit of cayenne.

Like this almost tastes like

it's got, like, Creole seasoning in it.

Open this up.

Count slices.

It seems like two pieces of ham

sandwiching a layer of cheese.

In terms of what's going on inside the chicken,

I feel good with where I'm at.

Think about ingredients I could be missing.

It really seems like they've gotta be in the dredge.

I think that wraps up second tasting.

I have a direction in terms of what I can shift.

We're gonna play around with some breadcrumbs.

So I think I'm good here though.

Okay, so things that are gonna be the same

about this test,

frankly, all of the dredge elements are gonna be the same

as what I did before.

Uh, oh shell down.

I tried to get so [beep] slick with that second one.

And there's a shell like all over that.

Pretend it didn't happen.

Let's get the breadcrumbs in here.

I'm sticking with the fine breadcrumb.

The original where it's taking me is a seasoning blend.

I'm gonna be adding cayenne,

paprika, onion powder, garlic powder.

It's hard to pick out any one element,

but it's indicative of like a certain

kind of style of cooking where you see these elements

often working together.

Is that gonna get me my 17 points or whatever?

I guess we gotta hope.

A little bit of cayenne.

Not much.

It's just heat, linear, in your face.

Paprika, good color concentration,

little bit of sweetness,

little bit of pepper flavor.

I'm gonna just do the garlic powder.

I'm going for the onion powder as well,

brings you a certain amount of umami.

It just, it makes things taste more like themselves.

Salt and the pepper.

Likely candidates for herbs

that could go on a mixture like this,

might be dried oregano or dried thyme.

I am not going to use that.

Just that like I didn't taste it on its own.

Nothing about the egg element really felt like

there's anything going on there.

You could combine egg and dairy.

I would kind of argue that it's really the egg

that's doing the heavier lift in that equation.

Two pieces of ham.

Do we go for three?

It's too bad we're not getting graded on just awesomeness.

You know, we could just max out on cheese,

really knocked hair back, you know?

Okay.

When you pound the chicken,

you start to compromise the integrity of the muscle.

Part of this dish is predicated

on you maintaining the integrity of both halves

of the chicken while also getting it really thin

such that you can get your ham and cheese package in there.

Oh geez.

[beep]

Let's just assume that it's all gonna work out.

The sort of working assumption here,

even though I had that tear in the skin,

the dredge is going to kind of be

a little bit of a bandaid on it

and just give a little bit of separation

between oil and then the chicken meat itself.

But I don't know, there's not too much

that's leaping out at me in terms of like

what the other processes that could

kind of come into play here.

That's all I got for you.

Ready to head to the stove.

The color to me is like so much more dependent

on how much of that spice blend goes into the breadcrumb

'cause it's gonna wanna get color like fast.

Already, the paprika really wanting to pull the color

of this really, really, really down.

That's annoying, all of these pockets.

That's a little bit of a bummer to me.

Even though I really calmed the heat down for the initial,

you know, cook on that first side,

still could have gone even a bit lower.

So we're gonna cut the chicken in half

on an angle this time,

how it was done in the original.

Layers are looking good.

Chicken is nicely cooked.

All right, so this is version two.

This is the one I need to serve to the judge

and overall feeling pretty good about it.

I'm now hoping to get ingredients closer to like,

let's call it an 85.

Technique wise,

I really didn't do much at all different.

I mean I sandwiched the cheese

between slices of ham this time,

I guess let's go with 87 then.

I'm very curious to see where the 13 points

are coming from that I'm missing here.

Let's say this is a 92 for appearance.

The enhanced color on the chicken seems correct.

Let's get up to an 85 for taste for this pass.

My self score for this round is an 87.

No more cracks at this

and I'm gonna gonna have to see what the judge says.

Hey Hana. Hey Chris.

How's it going?

It's good.

Yeah? How do you think you did today?

It felt like pretty straightforward,

not too many bells and whistles,

but maybe there was a whistle

that was just kind kind of far away

and I couldn't hear it that well.

Mm.

Do you have a guess as to the name of the dish

or the chef who made it?

I think this is chicken cordon bleu.

This dish feels like very kind of like continental European,

maybe just like cranked up just a little bit, you know,

mixing a little regular in with the decaf.

Chris, may I present to you,

chicken cordon bleu by chef Emeril Lagasse.

Ah, Emeril. [Hana laughs]

Okay, okay.

Not bad.

Some kind of like herb situation happening in there.

I just, I couldn't get it,

you know, in terms of the flavor.

[Hana] First of all, they look very similar

in just the color driven both by the dredge and the fry.

He layers two slices of ham,

two slices of cheese,

and then folds it over.

[Chris] I see.

Okay.

As far as the dredge goes, you did great,

but you're going to be upset to know

that it's Italian seasoned bread crumbs.

Stop.

That's the Progresso?

Oh my God.

[Hana] Yes it is.

It tasted so different to me.

It's because you also left out

the dried oregano and dred thyme.

[Chris] Oh.

And that is what you're seeing,

these little itty bits. Yeah.

He's starting with a base of Italian breadcrumbs

and then he is adding these things to it.

Yes.

That list might be long,

but the actual seasoning,

they're part of Emeril's signature original essence blend.

[beep] [Hana laughing]

[Chris] Interesting.

[Hana] Oh he looks so young on the label.

[Chris] He looks great.

Yeah. I mean he really does.

So once the chicken, you know, packages were assembled,

I simply went into a skillet with hot neutral oil.

Okay, this might freak you out.

Emeril uses olive oil.

Does he? And butter.

No.

[Hana] True to Emeril's more is more style,

the butter in the oil is introduced twice.

The sense that I had that this was this classic

that a lot of people know the name of,

but not necessarily what it is,

was in fact, given more of like a regionalized

or like a chef-specific spin.

Signs were there,

but they were more subtle than you might think.

Yeah, very subtle, small bam.

Just like a small-- Small bam, little bam.

[Hana] Yeah. Lowercase B.

In ingredients, you gave yourself an 85.

I gave you an 85.

Okay. You got nearly everything.

How are you to know it was a proprietary blend?

The heaviest docking of points in the ingredients list,

probably the bread crumbs.

You chose plain. Yeah that's fair.

He uses Italian seasoned.

Yeah.

On technique you gave yourself an 87.

I also gave you an 87.

Appearance, you gave yourself a 92

and I'm giving you a 94.

I docked a few points just on the ooziness of the cheese.

But the thing is you got the color

on the exterior just right.

It's nearly identical.

Okay, before I give you the taste score

we're gonna have to taste it.

Okay, we're doing Emeril's first.

We're tasting Emeril's first.

I must say chicken cutlets need a lot of help.

So I'm a fan of a proprietary spice blend

in this case for that very reason.

Seasoning is like, it's like the salt is right there.

We're tasting yours now.

Look at the layers.

Well seasoned.

So the salt level is perfect.

So for taste, you gave yourself an 85.

I give you an 88.

So that brings your overall score to an 89.

So bravo, that's very good job.

Not bad.

Are you happy?

I'm very happy.

Literally what I ask my daughter all the time, sorry.

Aren't you happy? [both laugh]

Listen, I'm certainly happy with how well I did

in terms of recreating this dish

and getting really close to the original.

You know, all the elements that he was adding in there,

the Emeril essence, like all of that,

I wanna believe that that made it less obvious

that it was simply a case of seasoned breadcrumbs.

And that was that.

[Cameraperson] If you had to sum this up in one word?

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Sorry that was rice.

I didn't have salt.