Sous vide wine poached chicken breast with caper sauce 鶏胸肉のワインスービィケイパーソース

This is continuation of sous vide cooking. I prepared chicken breasts over the weekend by deboning some bone in split breasts but it turned out I couldn’t cook them because we had other items to cook. I thought about microwaving them in sake for our sandwiches but, instead, placed them in a Ziploc bag after seasoning with salt and pepper. Since I had some French white wine already open, I poured that in the bag so that the chicken could marinate and last longer uncooked.

The next weekend came and the chicken was still in the bag marinating in the wine. I decided to save this chicken from its misery and decided to cook it sous vide. Since this was already in wine and in the Ziploc bag I used submerge-displace-the-air technique instead of vacuum packing.



Since I did not put much seasoning on the chicken and, the wine marinade was in the bag after sous vide cooking, I decided to make a sauce from wine, shallot, capers and butter. I served this with my potato salad and coleslaw.



Chicken: Two skin-on breasts which were removed form bone-in split breast. Seasoned with salt and pepper and then marinade in white wine.

Sous vide: The temperature and duration are always difficult to determine. The last time I did sous vide chicken breast, I used 140F for 1 hour. The meat was fine but I felt it could have been cooked at a bit lower temperature. So this time I choose 137F for 1 and half hours (which should be adequate for sterilizing the meat - at least 40minutes at 137F). I used submerge-displace-the-air technique . I lowered the Ziploc bag with chicken and the marinade into the 137F water with the seal still open so that the air could escape and secured it on the edge of the pot using a small binder's clip.

Sauce: I sautéed two small shallot cut in thin strips in butter, added the wine marinade and reduced it to 1/3 of the original volume. Added caper and pats of butter to finish. I squeezed lemon juice and tasted. It had enough salt and pepper and I did not add any.

This time I did not bother with crisping up the skin. I removed the skin and sliced the meat rather thinly. I poured the sauce over. Wine poaching and slightly lower cooking temperature made the chicken really moist and nice. Additional sauce also made this better.