Transcript: Chicken Scaloppine

Budget Health Nut
Episode “Chicken Scaloppini”

Joe Dias: Hi and welcome to Budget Health Nut, my name is Joe Dias, I am your host today. Today we have a great show for you lined up. We are going to do Joes favorite, chicken scaloppini Italian style.
What we are going to do is we are going to feature the white wine, Pinot Grio today. In a reduced lemon sauce. And go ahead and cook up some nice lean white meat, coupled with a nice side salad with some beets and some carrots. Add some nice flavor and color and punch for you there. And then we are going to go ahead and do some garlic bread pretty light on the butter, so we can go ahead and keep you health conscious.
Let’s go ahead and pull the meat out. Now what I have here is about a four dollars per pound. You can substitute some chicken thighs that are boneless if you will, but for the nice flavor. Especially for the nutrients side, the fat free side. Go ahead and go for a lean chicken breast.
I prewrapped my counter here, my counter top and my chopping board with some saran wrap. So that way not only can we go ahead and pound it flat, but we can stay sanitary, and not have to worry about getting those nasty germs everywhere. So let’s cut this bad boy open. This meals coming to about especially Italian meals man. It’s really not that expensive to fix Italian. Now the thinner you cut this, or the thinner you actually pound it down. The faster it will cook.
Now again the whole purpose behind this is not to get you in your kitchen cooking some good meals for your family or maybe even for yourself. This will actually serve about six people if you cut the big pounders in half. These are actually about 2/3 pounds breast. Go ahead and sauté these. And sometimes you can go ahead and dredge them in some flower if you want. Go ahead and give them some of that nice golden brown flavor. What I am going to do is I am going to go ahead and go without the flower.
I figured we already have some enriched floury spaghetti. And talking to Ashley our licensed dietician, we went ahead and cut back on the carbs as far as flower was concerned. So were going to go ahead and just sauté these nicely in olive oil.
So let’s go ahead and season these up. Also again just like I mentioned in the previous show, if you joined us. I really like using onion powder, and garlic powder as opposed to onion, salt, and garlic. I am not a big salt fan. Especially it’s not good for your blood pressure.
I got my pasta cooking up over there; you might pick up on some of that sound. I just got my pasta going real quick already, so that way we can go ahead and just plate it up. Spice both sides. I can take the excess from what I already put on top, and do the bottom side. Expect to break a few eggs before you actually perfect something to your own flavor. It’s really not a bad idea to go ahead and experiment with it.
Also, I have a garden at home so I went ahead and pick some fresh spinach just to add a little greenness to our dish. You might want to go ahead and toss that along once it melts down in the olive oil. Toss it with the pasta coming next.
I like to use the same olive oil that I go ahead and sauté the meat in with the vegetables I am going to do. And as this heats up, olive oil heats up pretty quick. And pasta really all you have to do is drain and go with that. So you can go with this al dente.
And spaghetti is a good 7 to 8 minutes. Now if you’re doing angel hair, you’re looking at a good six minutes. Some people like to put a little bit of olive oil in there water. Which you know I might do, because it helps prevent it from sticking.
Remember the flatter you get them, the faster they cook. So this only cost about four dollars per plate. Not to bad when you compare to about fourteen to sixteen dollars at a restaurant. So not only that but this is looking to feed bout at least three people, but more than likely more like six. Unless you’re feeding me.
Start that oven up at about three fifty. Preheat that if you can. And that way these are going to be done and golden really quick. Looking good underneath there. Let me show you real quick what’s it look like. See how fast it went ahead and browned now? Very nice.
Standard way is to cut it right across. And then what I am going to do to the top this is use my minced garlic. Some more chervil. Even add some fresh parsley as I chop it up. And nothing much more to that, put it in the oven on broil, after I take the chicken out. Because once this broils it’s going to get toasty on the outside and it only takes about two minutes.
Getting kind of loose, looking good. All you want to do is kind of crisp the outside, you want to turn down the heat a little bit so it doesn’t splatter anywhere. Put them in at 350. Those should be done about 10 or 15 minutes, since I cut them really, pretty thin.
Chicken broth again is fat free. I went ahead and bought a fat free with 40 percent less sodium style. Let that heat up a little bit so when I throw the onions in there, boom you’re done.
Now this isn’t going to be a regular tomatoes sauce like you normally do. It’s going to be a white sauce. Very light, airy, and then we are going to go ahead and use. This, a little lemon. A good way to do that is to rub it down here a little bit. Get some of those juices out. And then I am going to go ahead and add some zest and a little bit of cheese, parmesan. Fresh block of that.
It’s just going to marinate there a little bit, then we are going to go ahead and add our garlic. And this is going to sauté real nicely in about 3 minutes.
It’s been in there for about ten or twelve minutes. Again, since we already seared it we want to be careful of the Pyrex, it’s going to be still pretty hot. And we are going to want it to cool down so that way when we cut into it, the juices stay inside. Grab some of our yummy mushrooms. And again these are our baby portabellas. And they are going to go ahead and soak in all that wine.
We are going to give this a real quick toss. Were going to grab our lemon, and get some of this juice all nice inside those mushrooms. Get them all nice and saturated, because they are going to cook down pretty fast. We are going to go ahead and grab our same lemon that we used our zest from. Since we already rolled it down got some of those juices loosed up. We are going to go ahead and pour that in. And just squeeze about half a lemon in there. Nice and fresh. And a little bit of lemon.
Let’s turn on this. Actually what I did was I melted the butter, just from the ambient heat from the rest of the burners going off. And the butters nice and melted already. So we go ahead and add all that garlic, very nicely done. Tomatoes are the first additive. We just melt it down a little bit we don’t even need to toast this, because what we are going to do next, is were going to turn this on to broil, pour it over our bread. Pop it into the oven, and your looking good.
Now depending on how much wine flavor you like. The alcohol burns off in the cooking process, so you don’t really have to worry about that. And that is melted enough were good. What’s going to happen with the butter when your melting you’re garlic sauce there is that it’s going to release the flavor of the garlic?
We are going to let it cook down a little bit more and let it get some of that wine out. So it just leaves behind that fruity tasty flavor. Let’s add the whole leaf in there. And it’s going to melt down to basically nothing.
Move this stuff out of the way and let’s start our bread. Here we go, and you’re going to want to try and coat this as evenly as possible. Now I try to be pretty friendly with the butter. Because I know I will get yelled at down the road from our friend Ashley. Let’s get that in there real nice, get that soaked in.
Now this is a pretty big loaf of Italian bread, so you want to try to get that butter in there before it soaks in to much. Really it will just take care of itself fin the oven after you pop it in there. Set that in there a little bit more so it gets all the burners. Some nice fresh greens.
And this is a big salad so I am going to have to be a little bit, add a little bit more than I would maybe just a regular bowl of salad. Like a single bowl. Its going to be a pretty healthy sauce, hopefully Ashley will be happy with me.
Alright Ashley here we go.
Ashley Colpaart: Oh yum!
Joe Dias: Thank you very much. This is Joes Italian style Chicken Scaloppini. And again we are joined here with Ashley Colpaart, our registered dietician. And she is going to break down the numbers for us. She has been doing some number crunching and what not for us about what we have on our plate. And tell us what you found out.
Ashley Colpaart: This looks delicious by the way. You can tell by all the color that there is a lot of vegetable content on the plate which means lots of vitamins, lots of minerals. The chicken is going to be the most caloric dense thing on the plate. But it’s a lean chicken.
Joe Dias: That’s good news. Huh?
Ashley Colpaart: Chicken breast is always good to go with, as well as fish and poultry are gong to be your leaner meats. And then the scaloppini, adding all those vegetables in is also a great idea.
Joe Dias: Ok, so we are at 1,400 calories. Now what do you think this will go for in a restaurant?
Ashley Colpaart: You are leaning in towards about 2,000 calories.
Joe Dias: Again?
Ashley Colpaart: Again.
Joe Dias: Alright so in two shows we are looking at saving about 12 or 1,500 calories. Just from our first and second show even.
Ashley Colpaart: Another good thing I like about this plate is about half the plate is filled with vegetables. And that’s kind of how you want to portion your plate. Half the plate vegetables, a fourth of the plate you want to be our meat, protein source. And then your carbohydrates to be about a fourth.
Joe Dias: Alright well let’s go ahead. Do you want some wine by the way?
Ashley Colpaart: I would love some wine.
Joe Dias: Well then how rude am I. Go ahead and enjoy that wine. Is it good?
Ashley Colpaart: Mmm, yeah great flavor.
Joe Dias: Do you taste the lemon in there too? Ok, let’s take a look here, not too shabby.
Ashley Colpaart: I can taste the wine, the mushrooms are delicious.
Joe Dias: Are they? Thanks. Oh yeah it comes out nice, to go with the bread.