Two award-winning chefs take on the rotisserie chicken challenge. Aretah Ettarh, chef de cuisine at Gramercy Tavern, and Charlie Mitchell, executive chef and co-owner of Clover Hill, turn a grocery store chicken into a restaurant-worthy chicken salad. Ettarh serves her chicken salad sandwich on a hero roll with homemade mayo, tomatoes, lettuce, radish, and avocado. Mitchell builds his chicken salad on a sourdough toast topped with green goddess dressing, avocado, Honeycrisp apple, and confit egg.
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00:00 Oh, still has a neck on there that's kind of gnarly,
00:02 but some scared the [bleep] out of some little kid.
00:06 Hi, I'm Charlie Mitchell, executive chef
00:08 of Clover Hill in Brooklyn Heights.
00:09 -Hi, my name is Areta Ittar.
00:11 I'm the chef de cuisine at Gramercy Tavern here in New York.
00:13 -I'm going to show you how we turn this...
00:15 -This... -Into this.
00:17 ♪♪
00:22 -So, we're going to take this grocery-store rotisserie chicken
00:26 and turn it into a beautiful breakfast,
00:27 mainly chicken salad with parsley, apple,
00:31 a green lettuce dressing, a confit egg yolk,
00:33 and sourdough toast.
00:35 I've never made it with rotisserie chicken before.
00:37 I've done it with confit chicken or roasted chicken,
00:40 but never actually rotisserie.
00:41 -I'll be making my perfect chicken sandwich.
00:44 I grew up in Jersey, so I ate a lot of sandwiches
00:46 growing up, too.
00:47 Everyone keeps saying "hogi," but it's a hero.
00:49 It's not a sub. It's not a hogi. It's a hero.
00:51 Like, I'm not from Philly.
00:52 Like, I don't say that [bleep]
00:54 so cut that in post.
00:55 We'll be using a hero roll.
00:57 I'll be shredding it up, making a simple mayo,
01:00 and then some of my favorite ingredients,
01:02 like tomatoes, lettuce, radish, avocado.
01:05 -I mean, I'm not a big egg eater.
01:07 Like, I don't do scrambled eggs and omelets and whatnot,
01:09 so the confit egg yolk was just a more playful way
01:12 for me to eat eggs at home.
01:14 Can I take this? There we go.
01:17 -It smells good, so that's good.
01:19 Juicy AF.
01:21 But you can cut that out, 'cause I don't need, like,
01:23 the TikTok millennials -- zillennials or whatever the [bleep]
01:26 Oh, great. Next thing you know,
01:28 they're like, "Oh, she thinks she's cool."
01:30 I'm like, "I don't.
01:32 I don't, in fact, think I'm cool at all."
01:34 This is a great chicken.
01:35 Wow. I mean, this is a really good chicken.
01:39 Even the breast is -- is juicy.
01:42 So that's how you know it's good,
01:44 'cause that's the easiest thing to overcook.
01:47 Tastes great.
01:49 I love this chicken.
01:50 It's funny. Recently, we had this running joke
01:52 at the restaurant, like, how long it would take
01:54 any individual person to eat a whole rotisserie chicken.
01:57 And the answers ranged from five to seven minutes,
01:59 which I find absolutely absurd, to, like, a full day.
02:04 Or you could be more normal
02:05 and not, like, a weird restaurant person
02:08 and save the rest of it
02:09 for either more sandwiches in the future --
02:11 you can cut it up and serve it with, like, roasted potatoes
02:14 or Brussels sprouts or other vegetables.
02:16 Or you could just late night, fridge, rock it cold.
02:21 It's really up to you.
02:22 So let's get started.
02:23 I'm kind of taking off the leg and the thigh first,
02:27 and then we'll take off our chicken breasts.
02:29 Just kind of get it into nice chunks.
02:32 Just going to break it up a little bit
02:33 as we mix it later.
02:35 I mean, I like to have the chicken not be too small
02:37 so it doesn't get, you know, like, mushy.
02:41 You still want the meat to have some integrity,
02:43 kind of have some texture to it.
02:44 Now it's pretty nice, surprisingly.
02:47 So now we're going to start getting all of our ingredients
02:49 inside of the chicken salad.
02:51 Yeah, I mean, I went with the honey crips
02:52 just because it adds a nice texture.
02:55 I think it's nice to have something that kind of, like,
02:57 a mixture of textures throughout each bite.
02:59 So I'm just going to do, like, a random --
03:02 almost like a small-to-medium dice,
03:04 a little bit smaller than our chicken.
03:06 Then after that, we're going to add our cornichons
03:10 just for just straight-up acidity.
03:13 It's just a chicken salad of things
03:15 that I personally like to eat and the way I like to eat it.
03:18 I like it where, you know, everything is identifiable,
03:21 has its own identity.
03:23 So we're going to set aside the shredded chicken
03:25 that we have here and make a quick mayo
03:28 so we can build our sandwich.
03:29 To make a mayonnaise is actually very easy
03:31 and you only need a few ingredients.
03:33 So we have our eggs as part of the binding agent,
03:35 and then water.
03:36 Mustard is actually really important.
03:39 It really helps to keep your mayo intact.
03:42 A little vinegar for both sharpness, acidity, and flavor.
03:47 And of course, salt and pepper because we believe in flavor.
03:51 [ Whirring ]
03:53 Streaming your oil.
03:55 The oil is what you'll emulsify your liquids with.
03:58 [ Whirring ]
04:00 There you have it. Homemade.
04:02 What I'm really looking for is a nice consistency,
04:05 so something that's thicker
04:07 so it could really bind together with the chicken.
04:09 It should be something that has a bit of body
04:11 but is still a really nice, creamy consistency.
04:15 It's pretty good. It needs salt, though.
04:17 This is actually -- Wow. This is one of my better ones.
04:19 And we're going to add chives, parsley, and dill,
04:22 which are three of my favorite herbs
04:24 that we use all the time at the restaurant.
04:27 Yes, I always use -- Whenever I make green gouda,
04:29 a lot of dill.
04:32 I rarely pick the herbs unless I absolutely have to.
04:35 I just eat it stems and all.
04:37 So that's how we're going to make it today.
04:39 All right, so now we're going to make our green gouda dressing.
04:41 We're going to start with separating some egg yolks.
04:43 [ Clacking ]
04:45 -Ooh! Wrong egg. -Okay.
04:48 -That's [bleep] hilarious. -I'm so sorry.
04:51 -Take two. -So we have raw eggs here now.
04:55 There we go.
04:56 I'm going to do mainly egg yolk,
05:00 just because I like the dressing to be a little bit thicker.
05:04 Our avocado.
05:06 Then we're going to add in our dill and parsley,
05:08 and then we'll stream in a little bit of canola oil
05:10 and champagne vinegar, as well.
05:11 That's everything we need for our base.
05:14 I'm not a worker.
05:15 [ Whirring ]
05:18 I'm really just looking for the avocado
05:19 not to be in too big of chunks
05:21 and to break up those herbs just a little bit,
05:23 and then from there, we'll start adding in our oil.
05:27 [ Whirring ]
05:31 I mean, like, green gouda's traditionally,
05:32 you know, it's a salad dressing.
05:34 Any green herbs you may have when you're walking.
05:37 So this, we use our base.
05:38 We make an aioli, which is similar, like, to a mayo,
05:41 but it's really just to get a base on our salad dressing
05:43 that allows us to thin it out with vinegar and whatnot,
05:47 so that it tastes more like a creamy vinaigrette
05:48 is essentially what you want.
05:50 -Now it's time to cut your stuff.
05:54 I always steel my knife before I use it.
05:56 You don't necessarily have to sharpen your knife every day.
05:59 It's best to have a sharp knife, though.
06:01 That's the key.
06:02 A lot of home cooks don't actually have,
06:04 unfortunately, sharp knives,
06:05 and you're just, like, crying in the club.
06:07 So if you love really, really spicy things,
06:10 you can keep the seeds.
06:11 Some chives, because I love chives.
06:15 Chives are great, both visually and also flavor-wise.
06:18 At Gramercy Tavern, we use chives in almost everything.
06:22 You find a lot of garnishes.
06:24 At some point, we throw chives on the dish.
06:27 I love lettuce and tomato in a sandwich,
06:30 which is nuts, 'cause, like, growing up, I hated tomatoes,
06:32 but that's 'cause I only had bad tomatoes.
06:34 So once I figured out they don't have to taste bad,
06:37 that was a really big game-changer for me.
06:40 All right, so I'm taking out the core of the tomato,
06:43 hopefully successfully.
06:44 Boop.
06:45 There it is.
06:46 A little woody.
06:47 It's not great.
06:48 Well, I'm here for the people.
06:52 The core, not really the flavor I want.
06:56 An easy way to avoid, like, just trying to hack away
06:58 and smush it is to give it a little score
07:00 to give your knife room to slice through.
07:03 Like, we'll go, like, really thin
07:05 and soak it in ice water so it, like, curls.
07:07 For a sandwich, you don't necessarily need it super thin,
07:10 'cause you still wanna taste the flavor.
07:12 The radish.
07:13 Cut the ends, and really just cut enough
07:15 so it stands straight,
07:16 and then you're just cutting the pith out and deseeding it.
07:19 You don't wanna take out so much of the pith that,
07:21 like, you want as much lemon as you can.
07:23 Full utilization, or as close to.
07:26 And also, like, that's when you get the most juice,
07:28 but you remove the pith.
07:29 I wanna season the tomatoes real quick.
07:31 So you wanna season them just to extract
07:33 a little bit more flavor and concentrate their flavors.
07:36 I mean, even if they weren't seasoned,
07:37 you'd still season them, but it's even more important
07:40 when they're not, like, tip-top tomatoes.
07:43 - All right, so next we need to prepare our confit egg yolks.
07:46 Confit is just a term used to refer
07:49 to cooking something in fat.
07:51 A pot here, and we're gonna add some olive oil.
07:54 I'm using olive oil for this mainly for flavor purposes.
07:57 This is a little advanced for home cooking, slightly,
08:01 if you're not used to using a thermometer,
08:03 which I highly recommend every home cook
08:05 has a thermometer.
08:06 It'll take your game to the next level, in my opinion.
08:09 So basically, we wanna bring our oil up
08:12 to the temp you want it, 140 and 150.
08:15 And then essentially, you just let your egg yolks
08:16 hang out at that temperature.
08:18 For me, I like mine to be very runny,
08:21 but just, like, a little bit gooey.
08:24 We have done this technique in a restaurant.
08:25 We had it over a grain course,
08:27 a winner menu of last year.
08:29 Yeah, so now we'll just let this sit
08:30 for about 30 to 45 minutes.
08:32 We'll start checking it around 30 minutes,
08:34 and we'll start picking them up with a spoon
08:35 and kind of giving them a nice touch test
08:38 to see how firm they are and see if they're ready for us.
08:40 Yeah.
08:41 That's just nice.
08:50 A little salt.
08:51 We're gonna add in a little bit of the green garlic dressing,
08:54 chili flake, whole grain mustard, salt and pepper.
08:56 Indian chicken has nice texture.
08:58 It's not too dry.
08:59 Great.
09:01 I feel very good about this rotisserie chicken.
09:04 This tastes very good.
09:05 Ready to go.
09:07 Let's make a salad.
09:08 So, yeah, so we're just gonna make a little side salad.
09:10 We just have a variety of some greens here,
09:13 some little gem, some Caso Franco,
09:15 some other fresh greens here as well.
09:17 And we're just gonna make a small salad
09:19 with all the ingredients we've already been using
09:21 for the entire dish.
09:22 We're just gonna make our dressing
09:23 with just a little bit of olive oil
09:24 and champagne vinegar, salt and pepper.
09:26 And then we just give this a very light mix,
09:27 and we'll just pour it right on top of all of our greens.
09:30 Now we'll toast some bread,
09:31 and then we'll build my perfect chicken sandwich.
09:34 Ooh, she's sizzling fajita style.
09:38 She's perfect.
09:40 - And just a little bit of oil.
09:41 Yeah, usually I always toast in a pan,
09:43 and that's what we're looking for,
09:44 a nice, crispy, even color.
09:47 And that's gonna hold up to everything we're putting on top,
09:49 the chicken salad, the egg yolk, avocado,
09:50 and all that creaminess.
09:52 Nice, crispy bread.
09:53 - Now it's time to build our sandwich.
09:55 You don't have to go crazy with the amount of mayo
09:57 you put on your bun,
09:59 especially 'cause you have it already mixed.
10:00 - I don't like, like one of my least favorite things
10:02 is a sandwich that eats dry,
10:03 'cause it's just like, it's already bread.
10:05 It's like torture.
10:07 - Yeah, we used to do brunch at Clorio.
10:08 We opened in February.
10:09 We didn't go dinner only until November of that year.
10:12 So I used to make French omelets.
10:14 I used to make toast, grilled cheeses.
10:17 Brunches for mean people who wake up hungover and angry.
10:21 Or they have children and they're hungry, yeah.
10:25 - I'm trying to make sure I get a little bit of everything.
10:27 So I got some skin, I got some white meat,
10:29 dark meat, all the good things.
10:32 At the restaurant, we have our soup and sandwich special,
10:35 and that's in the tavern for lunch only.
10:36 And so I actually think about sandwiches kind of a lot,
10:38 both in life and for work.
10:40 So it's just convenient that it also ends up being for both.
10:43 The last sandwich I actually put on the menu
10:45 is an Italian beef sandwich.
10:47 That's like hot braised beef.
10:48 Now the thing is, people will reference the bear,
10:52 and I don't have any disrespect for that show,
10:54 but I don't need that in my life.
10:57 Please, please.
10:59 - All right, so the egg yolks we're gonna check now.
11:00 They've been going about 40 minutes,
11:03 and we wanna make sure they're right where we want them to be
11:05 and just to see, just to texture really,
11:09 just seeing how set they are, how firm they are.
11:12 That's what we're looking for,
11:13 and this is nice and jiggly still.
11:16 So it's gonna be nice and gooey.
11:17 - Lettuce top bun.
11:19 She's thick.
11:20 - All right, so now we're gonna build it.
11:22 Start with our little bit of our chicken salad.
11:24 It's just a natural thing to do
11:25 for me to build it off the plate
11:26 so the plate doesn't get too messy,
11:28 just in case I spill it or something like that.
11:31 So I always build off the plate first,
11:33 and then take some of our extra avocado here,
11:36 and then just a little bit of salt on top of the avocado.
11:39 Season our egg yolks a little bit.
11:41 A little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper,
11:44 then a little bit more herbs on top
11:45 that we've been using throughout pretty much everything.
11:48 There we have it.
11:49 And then to finish, just a little bit of our salad.
11:53 Well, there we have it.
11:53 This is my rotisserie chicken salad
11:55 with a green radish dressing, avocado,
11:57 comfy egg yolk, and side salad.
11:59 - So, she's here to party.
12:02 Here it is.
12:03 And that's my perfect sandwich.
12:05 (gentle music)
12:08 That tastes great.
12:16 Yum.
12:18 I'm gonna wash my face after all this is.
12:22 - That's really good.
12:23 (woman laughing)
12:25 - Yeah, I mean, number one, the toast on the bread
12:27 is really nice, nice and crunchy.
12:29 The chicken salad is bright and acidic,
12:32 and the egg yolk is creamy,
12:34 and almost gets almost like a cheesy flavor
12:39 from the creaminess, so it's very nice.
12:42 - The thing I love about this kind of sandwich
12:43 is that it eats much lighter than it appears.
12:45 It's really bright and herbaceous
12:47 with the herbs and the fresh basil.
12:49 The mayo itself is really light,
12:51 which also makes it eat really well.
12:53 Hellmann's sometimes can get a little too heavy,
12:55 especially with how much you add.
12:57 - You can't necessarily at this point
12:58 tell this was a rotisserie chicken.
12:59 You know, you can tell it was a nice roasted chicken maybe,
13:02 but I think it held up very well
13:04 to everything we added to it.
13:05 This dish today was a way for us to take
13:07 an approach to an ingredient like a rotisserie chicken
13:09 and sort of elevate it with some techniques
13:12 like the comfy egg yolk
13:13 and the homemade green radish dressing,
13:15 and also brighten it up a little bit
13:17 with a lot of herbs and things that we would use,
13:18 you know, in a kitchen setting as well.
13:20 - A sandwich is a great way to use a rotisserie chicken,
13:23 especially because most of them,
13:25 generally speaking, it's a whole chicken.
13:27 It's difficult to eat all of it in one sitting,
13:29 and it's a great way to use up a lot of the chicken
13:33 so it doesn't go to waste.
13:34 You can prep a bunch of this mix ahead of time
13:37 and have it in your fridge
13:38 and eat it over the course of a few days,
13:40 and it will still taste great.
13:42 - I know you said previously
13:43 you do not cook much at home.
13:45 - I do not cook at home, unless I'm absolutely forced to.
13:48 And then on my days off,
13:49 I'm not really trying to be in front of the stove.
13:52 A lot of Uber Eats, a lot of takeout, yeah.
13:55 (upbeat music)
13:57 (upbeat music)
14:00 (upbeat music)