♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Dan makes skillet roasted chicken breast with garlicky green beans.

Jack challenges Julia to a tasting of vegan and vegetarian chicken nuggets, and Sam makes Julia braised chicken thighs with fennel, orange, and cracked olives.

It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen."

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♪♪ -Let's talk about the combination of chicken breasts and green beans.

It's safe and dependable, a little bit boring.

Now, those are all things I want out of a used car, but not my dinner.

So to wake up this less-than-dynamic duo is Dan.

-What kind of car can I get you in today?

-It's kind of the Yugo.

-[ Laughs ] The Yugo.

Yes, they can be a little bit boring, but we've got a really cool technique here and we're going to add a ton of flavor, especially to the green beans.

-Okay.

-So we're going to start with four bone-in skin on chicken breast.

This is a really great cut -- It's got the skin to protect the meat, it's got the bone to protect it underneath, the skin can get really nice and crispy.

And it gives you a little of that whole roast chicken feel.

-Right.

-But good for a weeknight.

So I have four 10 to 12 ounce bone-in skin on chicken breasts.

And the first thing we're going to do is do a little separation of the skin and the meat here.

So I'm going in on the rib side, where the ribs would be, and I'm just opening it up like this.

I want to leave it attached at the top and at the bottom.

That's going to make it really easy to put it back on.

I'm going to do that for all of them first.

Great, okay, so now that I've opened it up, I'm going to use some salt here and get that right on the flesh.

-Nice.

-And for all four of these I'll use about 1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt.

-Okay.

-Okay, so now I'm putting the skin back in place.

Make it nice and pretty.

-Okay.

-And I'm going to use a skewer.

You could use a paring knife here as well.

All skin is not the same.

This section here where you can see the meat really clearly through that's already very thin, whereas this section here is much thicker.

And why it's thicker and harder to see through is because there's fat.

Now, fat is -- is a great thing, it adds a lot of flavor.

But if you have a ton of fat underneath skin, it can get crispy on the skin.

But then it's going to sog back out.

So you really want to open up some channels here for it to run right out.

-Render.

-Okay, I'm gonna wash my hands.

-Okay.

-I'm going to start cooking.

All right, now it's time for our really innovative cooking technique.

So we're going to start with a cold pan over here.

And I'm just going to spray the top of these chickens.

Very light coating of vegetable oil spray.

So we're going to go skin side down in our cold skillet.

Looks like a crowded skillet.

That's not a problem.

You're going to see that we're going to go low and slow for a while here.

This is medium-high heat.

Now this technique which we call cold searing, we use this for a lot of different proteins now.

And what's really nice about it is you're accomplishing two things at once.

So we're starting to render the skin.

We're also slowly starting to heat the meat up as well.

We're going to go here for about 7 to 9 minutes and we'll keep checking.

We don't want to move it around too much, but we'll keep checking just to make sure that they're getting there.

All right, it has been eight minutes and we've been -- we've been peeking.

But I just want to show.

-Oh, gorgeous.

-Isn't that beautiful?

-Lovely.

-We can see some nice rendered fat.

So we know we're doing a good job here.

So I'm going to flip all this over.

-Look at that.

-Because we started low and slow, there's not a lot of splatter.

-Right.

-Not a lot of fanfare.

So now we're going to put this pan into a 325 degree oven and cook until the breasts register 160 degrees.

Takes anywhere from 25 to 30 minutes.

Mmm.

It smells like chicken dinner.

-It smells gorgeous.

There's nothing better than the smell of roast chicken.

Come on.

-I know, right?

It's the best.

All right, so we're looking for 160 in the thickest part.

160 on the dot.

We're going to get this out of our skillet and onto a plate to rest.

It's also really nice about this method is it's skin side down for so long that you get great rendering of fat, gorgeous, crisp brown skin.

So this is culinary gold.

We have fond which is beautiful brown flavor, we've got rendered fat, we have juices.

It's amazing stuff.

-Mm-hmm.

-Now normally we would turn this into a pan sauce.

-Sure.

-Put it back on the chicken, which is awesome.

But we're actually going to use it to season a vegetable.

That's where the green beans come in.

We're going to make a really flavorful base for those green beans, and that's going to start with three cloves of garlic.

So you just want to thinly slice these.

All right, we're going to get this into our pan.

Along with a 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes and 3/4 of a teaspoon of kosher salt.

All right, I'm going to bring this up over medium-high heat.

And what we want to do here is cook it until it starts to sizzle, which means that most of the liquid has evaporated out of it.

That way we'll get a little bit of sizzling in some good cooking in fat for the garlic.

And really draw that flavor out.

-Lovely.

-Okay, I'm going to prep our green beans over here.

So we're working with 1 1/4 pounds of green beans.

I'm going to trim them up.

And this is really, really simple.

Basically just going to take off the stem end there.

If this end doesn't look good, I'll also take that off.

-Sure.

-But that one looks great.

So we're just getting some good sizzle there.

-Lovely.

-Most of our liquid has evaporated and we're getting some of the garlic cooking in fat there, helps spread that flavor all around.

-Gorgeous, gorgeous.

-So now we're going to go in with our green beans.

And 1/3 cup of water.

That is going to produce a lot of steam which we want to trap with our lid.

Beautiful.

Steaming is a great and efficient way to cook green beans, which are actually pretty hearty.

They can take some heat to really cook through.

So we're going to cook these for 8 to 10 minutes until they are tender.

I'll give them a good stir about halfway through, and we'll adjust the heat as needed to keep them steaming with a little bit of snap to them.

-Okay, -Okay.

Oh, fabulous.

These look nice.

What we're going to do here is take the lid off.

We're going to drive off all of this moisture until we get a sauce that just clings around each bean.

-Fantastic.

-So that takes about 2 to 4 minutes.

And after that we'll be about ready to eat.

Oh, okay.

Beautiful.

So my last step over here with the chicken is just make sure any juices that came out go in.

-Mm-hmm.

-Give it a little toss and then we'll platter this up.

Now I have 1/2 cup of parmesan that I shredded on the big box grater.

-Yeah.

-So instead of having it disappear into the dish, you actually get some nice texture and big bursts of flavor when you get one.

-Nice.

-Okay, and now I just transfer the chicken to the platter right on top of the green beans.

-Gorgeous.

-I got you one beautiful breast there.

-Lovely.

This is a very impressive family meal.

-Right?

And let's dig in.

-I'm gonna go for a little bit of a skinnier end of the chicken breast.

All right.

You can see that skin, though.

Really well seasoned.

Gorgeous.

Very juicy.

-Mm-hmm.

-That is almost impossible to do with chicken breasts.

And that skin has beautiful flavor.

-It's true that low and slow technique and the slow searing, and then getting in the oven helps to cook really evenly.

-Let me tuck into one of these beans here.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

Mmm!

It tastes like roast chicken and green beans had a baby.

-Right, it's schmaltzy.

-It's schmaltzy.

-Really unctuous.

Really nice.

-Well, it has that deep caramelized fat flavor, all that fond that was in the bottom of the pan.

-What I love about this method is it really is a technique that has a lot of broad use.

So you can actually switch out the vegetable and make a completely different dinner.

-And you can find all of those instructions on our website.

What a beautiful pairing -- Green beans, chicken.

Kind of a dream team now.

-Right?

-Like you and me.

-Exactly.

-If you want to wake up your Tuesday nights and make this fantastic pairing, it starts by seasoning the chicken right under the skin and start the chicken breast skin side down in a cold skillet.

Use the flavorful chicken fond and fat to cook those green beans.

So from "America's Test Kitchen" Skillet roasted chicken breast with garlicky green beans.

Just what other vegetables are you talking about?

Like broccoli?

-Broccoli is great with this method.

♪♪ -Today I'm tasting vegan chicken nuggets.

So this is not chicken?

-All of the brands we tasted were vegan, except for one -- it was vegetarian.

You're only tasting vegan nuggets.

They've got two components -- crispy coating, which is the same whether it's vegan, vegetarian, or chicken.

And then the inside.

[ Both laugh ] -The filling.

-The filling So these are made with pea protein, soy protein, wheat gluten.

And the biggest thing that we found is they're ingredients there that are designed to sort of amp up the savoriness.

So a lot of garlic and onion and yeast extract to sort of build umami.

I mean, the reality is chicken nuggets aren't super flavorful to begin with, right?

And so... [ Chuckles ] -Sorry.

-You're okay?

-Mm-hmm.

-Was that a good sorry or not-so-good sorry?

-No, that's terrible.

-Are you sure about that?

-Yeah, that one's -- that one.

Whoa, it lingers, too.

Okay.

Wow.

It has residual.

-Well, I promised this was going to be interesting.

-It is interesting.

-So besides flavor, texture is pretty different.

Some of them are perfectly smooth, almost pasty, which is not great.

Some of them actually kind of replicate muscle fiber.

So these are all basically they take the slurry and extrude it, and based on how they extrude it, they can either get a smooth texture, a sort of slightly smooth texture, or things that sort of replicate muscle fiber.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

So tell me more about what you just tasted.

-Okay, well, this one was downright awful.

I don't know what the flavor of this was.

It doesn't taste like chicken.

Um, it has a very sour, vegetal, um, sort of malt.

Yeasty, but in a bad way.

This one tastes fine.

It tastes bland.

It's spongy.

These two -- I mean, they have a process texture, which I expected, but they're shockingly realistic.

This one is sweet.

It's nice and crisp.

This one, which is the first one I tasted, it looks like pieces of meat.

I mean, it has the texture.

Both of these tastes good to me.

Yeah, and that was -- our tasters thought some of these were indistinguishable.

Um, or they liked them as much, if not more than nuggets.

I mean, remember, nuggets.

It's not exactly gourmet food.

-Mm-hmm.

-So if I had you pick one, where are you going?

-I think I prefer the flavor of this one a bit more and the crispness.

But this one's a close second.

-Okay.

Let's start with what you liked best.

So you picked the winner.

This is from Impossible.

-The people who've conquered the burger world have done the same with chicken.

-Mm-hmm.

-Um, it was our top choice.

It's delicious.

-Yeah.

-It's got a crisp coating, as you said, and it's savory.

It's not really chicken-y, but it's savory.

-Mm-hmm -So let's go to the middle where things weren't so happy.

This was actually the runner up.

I'm surprised you didn't like this.

-Really?

This one?

-Yeah.

[ Laughs ] -Wow.

That was not happening for me.

-You're allowed to have that reaction.

Um, our tasters weren't wild about the Alpha, which is down here at the end.

-Huh.

-So down there.

-Mm-hmm.

-Chicken nuggets.

-[ Laughs ] Classic.

This is a chicken nugget.

-It's a chicken nugget.

-No kidding.

-Yeah.

No kidding.

And you really couldn't tell the difference?

-No, I didn't like it.

I actually prefer the Impossible.

-So did our tasters.

-Oh, interesting.

-It's good to surprise you once in a while.

-Thanks, Jack.

This was fun.

-You're welcome, Julia.

-There you have it.

If you want to try out vegan chicken nuggets, check out the Impossible brand.

♪♪ Chicken thighs taste terrific when they're braised, because the low slow cooking method turns the meat juicy and tender as it breaks down the collagen It's terrible for the skin, however, which stays sort of slick and flabby.

But today, Sam's going to show us a method that produces tender, juicy meat and beautifully crisp skin.

-That's right, Julia, you're going to love this recipe 'cause not only are we going to achieve super crispy chicken skin, we're also going to incorporate sophisticated flavors here with orange, fennel, and olives.

-Oh, that sounds delicious.

-Mm-hmm.

So let's get started on our chicken.

So here I have eight bone-in skin on chicken thighs.

They're about six ounces each.

-Mm-hmm.

-And the first thing we want to do, of course, is pat them dry.

'Cause like any protein that you're searing, you want to make sure that it's nice and dry so that it doesn't essentially steam in our skillet.

-Right because we're going after crisp skin.

-Exactly.

That is the number one goal of today.

You always want to season everything as you go along.

So here I have 1 1/4 teaspoons of table salt and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper.

By raising your hand well above the chicken, you're getting a lot of surface area covered more evenly.

Give these a good flip.

Sprinkle both sides evenly with our salt and pepper mixture.

So over here in my 12-inch oven safe skillet, I've had 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil heating at medium-heat.

And we're looking for that nice shimmer effect.

-Mm-hmm.

-Which tells us that we're ready to start searing our chicken thighs.

So we're going to place our chicken thighs skin side down.

This is the first side that we want to heat.

We want to get that chicken nice and golden brown and crispy.

Kind of make like a chicken thigh flower shape.

So it goes right in the middle.

All right, so we're just going to let our chicken sit here.

We don't want to touch it.

We won't even look at it.

We just want that skin to get nice and golden brown which should take about eight minutes.

So while that's happening, let's get started on our fennel.

-Okay.

-So here I have a small fennel bulb.

And as you can see I still have the fronds on here.

Now rather than throw them away, we figured why not use them as a nice garnish?

-Yep.

-They carry a nice, mild fennel flavor.

They look pretty.

-Mm-hmm.

-So I'm just going to take some of these fronds off.

We're looking for about 2 teaspoons of minced fennel fronds And now we can decapitate our fennel bulb.

[ Both laugh ] Get rid of our fronds.

You could certainly save these, use them for stocks.

But today we're just going to... -Set them aside.

-Dispense them.

Now we're going to finely chop our fennel bulbs.

I'm going to half this.

And now you can see that very tough core in our fennel.

So just very carefully take my knife running it down either side of that core.

So now we have our fennel halved.

I'm going to treat this like I said, kind of like an onion, and just do this layer by layer.

So with my hand, I'm going to take some horizontal slices followed by some vertical ones.

And now we're just going to run our knife right through our fennel looking for about 1/4 inch pieces.

All right, Julia, it's been eight minutes.

So we're ready to flip our chicken.

And you were unsure as to whether or not this was going to get golden brown.

So are you ready for this?

-I am.

Well, they shrunk nicely.

-They sure did.

That's right.

But let's look at this color -Oh, that's gorgeous.

-Are you kidding me?

That's gorgeous.

This is a crowded pan and everything.

-Mm-hmm.

-Okay.

So we're just going to let our chicken thigh sear on the other side for about three minutes.

-Great.

-All right, Julia, our chicken has finished searing so we can now take them out of the skillet.

So I have a large plate here.

And I'll just transfer our chicken.

Man, that smells so good.

-Mm-hmm.

-So there's a lot of fat in here, but we only need to use about 2 tablespoons.

So I'm going to pour off some of the excess fat.

About half of this.

-Yeah.

-Right into a bowl.

We're going to crank our skillet back to medium heat, and now we're going to cook our fennel.

So I'll take our fennel... add that straight into our skillet.

-Mmm.

-As well as 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes.

-A little heat -Exactly.

Just a little bit of a kick.

And now I'm going to cook our fennel in our skillet for about five minutes until our fennel gets nice and golden brown and tender.

-Okay.

-All right, Julia, it's been about five minutes.

Our fennel is nice and golden brown.

-I love it when you brown fennel 'cause it takes on that sweet quality.

-Absolutely, it's nicely caramelized and delicious.

So now we can start to build our braising liquid.

So the first thing I want to do is add 1 cup of chicken broth, classic.

As well as 1 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice.

-Oh, that's interesting.

-Yes, the flavors of fennel and orange work beautifully together.

They really complement each other.

So as we bring this up to a simmer, I am now going to really scrape the bottom of our pan with my wooden spoon to pick up any and all of those stuck on bits.

-Yeah, because those bits are flavor.

You want that flavor in the sauce.

-Absolutely, these are little nuggets of flavor bombs.

So we have our orange juice and we have our chicken broth.

We're also going to add some Pernod.

-Mmm.

-So this is a French aperitif.

It has a very licorice flavor, to it similar to Sambuca which you could certainly use if you can't find Pernod, but this is going to really complement that fennel that we have in here.

So we're looking for about 2 tablespoons.

In you go, Mr. Pernod.

-Oh.

-Lovely.

So now we have our braising liquid at a nice simmer so we can return our chicken thighs back to their home.

And again going to keep these skin side up in the skillet.

-Ah!

Out of the braising liquid.

-Exactly.

Remember that was my number one focus for you today, was to deliver crispy chicken skin.

-Well you got it crisp, now the key is to keep it crisp.

-Exactly.

Maintenance.

Okay, so we've got our chicken in our braising liquid.

So I'm just going to cut the heat... -Mm-hmm, it's up in a nice simmer.

-Yep.

And we're ready to transfer it to the oven.

So I have my oven at 325 degrees in the lower-middle position.

And we're going to cook these for about 40 minutes until the chicken comes to 195 degrees.

-Oh, it smells good.

-It sure does.

My oh my.

Crispy chicken, again.

We were looking for the internal temperature to be 195.

So let's see where we're at here.

-On the nose.

-Spot on.

Nailed it.

-Nicely done.

-Now 195 is our go-to temperature for chicken thighs because all that collagen breaks down and it's just super supple and tender.

So our chicken is ready to go.

I'm going to just take our chicken.

This is actually going to be right onto our serving platter here.

-You can hear the crispiness of the skin against the tongs.

So speaking of that crispy skin, we want to maintain that all day long.

So we're going to cover our chicken with some aluminum foil, but we're just going to tent it.

We don't want to suffocate it 'cause then it's going to steam and we're going to get flabby skin again.

So now in the meantime, you can see we still have pretty good amount of liquid in here.

So we want to reduce this.

So I'm going to crack the heat up to high-heat.

And we're going to let this cook and reduce until it reaches about 1 1/2 cups which should take about eight minutes.

-All right.

-Julia, our sauce has been reducing for about eight minutes.

-Mm-hmm, that looks nice and thick.

So I'm going to cut the heat to medium-low and get working on our cornstarch slurry.

-Okay.

That's a thickener for the sauce.

-It sure is.

Yes.

So here I have 1 1/2 teaspoons of corn starch, which I'm going to add 2 teaspoons of water.

And just give this a nice whisk and add this straight into our skillet, whisking it in.

And what I love is that the magic happens almost immediately here with that corn starch.

This is looking nice and thick and luscious.

Yum.

-All right.

-So we're just going to cut the heat all together and add some finishing touches to our sauce -Okay.

-I have 18 olives total here.

These are Castelvetrano olives.

-Those are beautiful.

-They sure are.

These are brine-cured olives and they're meaty, they're peppery, they're just so full of flavor, and I love them.

If you can't find Castelvetrano, you can certainly use Picholine or Cerignola.

Now, rather than taking all these olives and halving them, I just like to do the good old smash work.

Similarly to a garlic clove, I'm just going to take my knife, smash the olive right against the cutting board.

And this is just going to help release those oils so that they go right into our sauce.

So we're going to add our olives right into our sauce.

Next up we have some orange.

Remember we had our juice earlier in our braising liquid, so we're just going to use some freshly grated orange zest about 1/2 teaspoon of orange zest which I will just smack right above our skillet.

-Nothing but net.

-[ Laughs ] And last but not least, I have some lemon juice.

This is 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

This is just going to waken everything up, bring lovely acidity to this whole dish that has a lot of complex flavors.

And now we're just going to whisk this in.

-The sauce is off heat at this point?

-Correct, so we are combining all of our olives, our orange zest, that lemon juice.

-Mmm.

-So we are ready to plate.

Our chicken can escape from their foil home.

-[ Chuckles ] -All right, so rather than dump our sauce right on top of our chicken, remember, I wanted to promise you crispy skin.

-You did.

-So I'm going to take my serving spoon and just carefully work around those chicken thighs.

-I love it.

-She's almost a looker.

You know what she needs, though?

-The fronds.

-The fennel fronds.

Exactly.

So we're just going to take those 2 teaspoons of minced fennel fronds from the beginning.

-I love the way this dish looks.

This is my kind of food.

Oh, I smell the Pernod and the fennel and a little bit of the orange in the background.

-Yes.

Some of this.

And I'm going to get you some of those olives and that sauce.

-Oh, yeah.

-Lovely.

And when you look at this chicken, you wouldn't think that it's braised.

-No.

-Because you see that crispy chicken skin.

-Gorgeous.

Now for the flavor.

All right.

Let's go for it.

-Mm-hmm -Skin.

Get a little chicken thigh.

Oh, a little bit of olive.

-Mmm.

-Mmm!

That sauce has such an unexpected burst of flavor.

You taste the orange, you taste the fennel, and the little bit of olive just makes it come alive.

-The brininess really complements all the other flavors in the sauce.

The chicken is super tender, the skin is crispy.

And we also have a couple more variations on this recipe on our website.

-Sam, this is delicious.

Thank you.

-I'm so glad you like it.

-There you have it.

If you want a fresh take on braised chicken thighs, start by browning the chicken thoroughly in a skillet.

Keep the skin above the level of the braising liquid to keep it crisp, and reduce that liquid down to a flavorful pan sauce.

From "America's Test Kitchen," a wonderful new recipe for braised chicken thighs with fennel, orange, and cracked olives.

You can find this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with our product reviews and select episodes at our website, americastestkitchen.com/tv.

And a little bit of Pernod.

Ah.

Oh, that's a per-yes.

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