The Art of Cooking with Cast Iron Skillets: A Journey to Culinary Excellence

As I stand before my trusty cast iron skillet, I am reminded of the importance of heat conduction. This skillet, with its even distribution of heat, is the perfect tool for achieving that golden brown crust on our chicken breasts. The sound of sizzling fat and the aroma of melting seasonings fill the air as I carefully place my chicken in the skillet, ready to face the fiery temperatures within.

The anticipation builds as I wait for the skillet to reach its peak temperature. Two to three minutes pass, and the first signs of transformation become apparent - a golden brown hue begins to emerge, and the once-white chicken breast starts to take on a rich, almost blackened color. The moment of truth arrives, and I carefully remove the skillet from the heat source, revealing a culinary masterpiece. The chicken is cooked to perfection, with a crispy exterior giving way to tender, juicy flesh.

As I continue cooking, I am acutely aware of the differences in heat distribution between my trusty cast iron skillet and other cookware options. While non-stick skillets may provide ease of use, they simply cannot match the even conduction and heat retention of cast iron. This knowledge allows me to adjust my cooking techniques accordingly, always seeking that perfect balance of flavor and texture.

With my chicken breasts cooked to perfection, I turn my attention to the rice pilaf, a staple in many cuisines around the world. The addition of aromatics such as celery, bell peppers, and onions creates a flavorful base for this dish, which is then elevated by the subtle yet essential tomato paste. As I fluff the rice, releasing its aromatic oils into the air, I am filled with excitement - this pilaf is more than just a side dish; it's an integral component of our meal.

To finish the dish, I plate the chicken atop the fragrant rice pilaf, garnishing it with a sprinkle of green onions and a few select herbs. The result is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate - a symphony of colors and textures that invites all who partake to indulge in its culinary delights.

As I take my first bite, the flavors explode on my tongue - the tender chicken, the perfectly cooked rice, and the subtle nuances of seasoning come together in perfect harmony. It's a truly transcendent experience, one that leaves me eager to experiment with new recipes and techniques. And so, I'll continue to hone my craft, always seeking that perfect balance of flavor and texture, and never losing sight of the joy that comes from cooking with love.

For added flair, consider adding a sprinkle of chopped Italian parsley to your dish, as it will add an extra layer of complexity to the overall experience. This subtle yet effective addition is sure to elevate your meal to new heights.

Finally, let's not forget the importance of safety in the kitchen - I remove the bay leaf from my pilaf and take a moment to appreciate the aromas that have developed. With this dish now complete, I am left with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, knowing that all of my hard work has come together to create something truly exceptional.

The rice pilaf is more than just a side dish; it's an integral component of our meal, providing a healthy serving of carbohydrates while also sneaking in essential vegetables. By creating a flavorful base and adding aromatics, I've successfully convinced even the pickiest eaters to give this dish a try. And so, without further ado, let us dig in and savor the fruits of my labor - for in the world of culinary excellence, there is no greater joy than sharing that experience with others.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni'm kenneth temple and welcome to my class i'm so excited that you decided to join me today because we are making blackened chicken with creole rice pilaf this occasion creole classic is so misunderstood but very easy to make all you need is some melted butter and a piping hot cast on skillet make sure you open up a window let's get cooking before we begin make sure you have two sticks of unsalted melted butter make sure that you have two baking sheets lined with aluminum foil and also make sure that you have your oven preheated to 400 degrees let's get in the kitchen let's get in the kitchen and start to cook i got some rice peel off that i'm about to cook so to get this thing started we're going to take a onion half of an onion that is and we're going to cut them down the middle in creole cooking we always use a spanish onion a white onion can work for this recipe too but a spanish onion will give you that full cajun creole experience now between me and you the first level onion is always testing your patience because it's going to slide off sometime but sometimes it's going to actually work so we're just going to chop down this onion for this beautiful rice pilaf and the only thing that really makes the rice pilaf different from other rice dishes is that you're actually cooking some vegetables in it that's what makes a rice pilaf a pilaf you know you can do any type of vegetable you love in it so now we're gonna go ahead on and chop down a half of a bell pepper did you see how easy that was just follow the groove of the bell pepper and you don't have to worry about any seeds any pith life is easy so we're gonna go ahead on and chop down a half of a bell pepper i decided to go with red because the rice pilaf you're gonna still see all the beautiful white grains from our white rice but feel free to use a green a yellow orange bell pepper all right no rules for the bell peppers look at that nice and pretty so we're gonna also slice down two stalks of celery now if you haven't chopped down celery this is the easiest way is you just want to get it full length and drag it or just take it and chop it the options jurors welcome to the cajun creole cooking with ken and temple on the food network kitchen all right so we're just gonna go ahead on and dice our celery now you can begin to see the beautiful colors of our creole rice pilaf and we have our trinity the holy trinity onions celery and bell pepper you don't have to use red bell pepper but do note that the red yellow and orange are much more sweeter than the green now let's go ahead on and start cooking so we're going to cut our pot on a medium heat and i'm going to add one tablespoon of oil and one tablespoon of butter now adding the oil in the butter is gonna do two things it's gonna definitely add more flavor but adding the oil is gonna keep the butter from burning and no nobody want no burnt butter okay we're saving that for the black cue nice soft brass band music while this melts envision yourself walking down bourbon street in the french quarter watch your step so we're just going to add all of our trinity into this here's a sneaky secret i love to add just a pinch of salt to whatever i'm cooking to help bring out the moisture in the vegetables which is going to help them cook a whole lot faster now that does not count against our salt requirements it's just a little pinch while this cooks for a few minutes we're going to go ahead on and chop down our garlic so i'm going to take two cloves of garlic always remember the one rule about garlic you can add as much as you love and take out what you really don't like these two garlic cloves is just perfect for me so we're just going to go ahead on and mince them you can always use a garlic press if you love make that happen and enjoy it but you want to get it nice and chopped and fine oh yeah you can just smell the onions celery and bell pepper just starting to perfume the whole house that's what good cooking's all about look at how beautiful that looks now we're gonna add two cups of rice to our pot and what we're going to do now is we're going to make sure that the rice is evenly coated with all of the fat that we have in here so look at that that's what you want to see nice beautiful coated grains of rice with all of the fat okay now we're going to add our bay leaf we're going to add our garlic we're going to add three tablespoons of tomato paste this is bringing the creole this is gonna be the tomato paste it's gonna give it a beautiful red color and also the tomatoes gonna add a depth of flavor also to that i'm gonna add one teaspoon of garlic powder one teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of black pepper stir it up you know bob olly was on to something when he created the song stir it up you know he definitely was thinking about good cooking you can already start to see as the rice is getting nice and coated with that tomato paste and it's adding a beautiful color so now that that's ready we're going to add four and a quarter cups of stock to this here now that we have all of our rice fully coated with our liquid stock that is you want to grab a fork so you can make sure that you stir this properly we're also trying to make sure that we break up the tomato paste and that is not just sitting in clumps okay that looks fantastic the great thing about rice pilaf is that you can either store it in the fridge for about seven days or put it into the freezer for about three months the option is completely yours so once it comes up to a full ball i'm going to cover it slide it to my other burner over a low fire so it can cook for about 15 to 20 minutes creole rice pilaf smell it think about it it's in the works now that our rice is at a full boil what i'm going to do is cover it and slide it to a cooler burner let this cook on a lower temperature for 15 to 20 minutes let's get to the blackened chicken so let's make this blackened chicken the first thing we want to do is we want to get our cast iron skillet or skillet up to smoking point now you can use any skillet you want i prefer cast iron just because of the even heat distribution that it has but you can also use a non-stick skillet that's large enough to do it but if you can get a cast iron go ahead this will be the time now we can do three things at once while this is coming up to temperature let's make our beautiful blackened seasoning so we're gonna add one tablespoon of hot paprika we're gonna add two and one quarter teaspoons of kosher salt you can use sea salt if you want we're going to add one teaspoon of black pepper then we're going to also add one and a half teaspoons of granulated garlic one and a half teaspoons of granulated onion then we're going to add three quarters of a teaspoon of dried oregano three quarters of a teaspoon of dried thyme three quarters of a teaspoon of cayenne and yes you've guessed it three quarters of a teaspoon of white pepper now we're going to take a fork and just go ahead on and blitz it together stir it on up so as you can see all of our seasonings is nice and evenly distributed oh yeah that's the taste of louisiana right there baby now you're supposed to have two sheet pans lined in foil one we're going to use for our chicken that we're going to dip into the butter and then season the other keep it to the side as we cook our blackened chicken we'll put the cooked chicken on this because this is going into a 400 degree oven let's make it happen baby now what we're going to do is we're going to take some tongs you can use some gloves if you want and we're going to dip our chicken on both sides in this butter you want this chicken to go on a butter vacation okay you don't want this chicken thinking about saving any calories make sure you place it skin side down and the reason we're doing this is once we finish seasoning on the skin side that's going to be our presentation side that's going right into the hot skillet so cut on some music get your little song in your head while you dip and dredge your chicken in butter all right don't worry about shaking off no excess we want that extra butter to go on the chicken you always want to make sure that your chicken is room temperature because if you have cold chicken what the chicken is going to do is that extra coldness is going to actually seize the butter and then you're going to end up with cold butter you want this butter nice and melted so once it hit that skillet it can make the sound of love making which is the sound that we all love okay now we're going to evenly season all of this chicken on both sides now when it comes to blackening seasoning you can add a little bit more a little bit less of that i say one thing that you probably can save yourself on is just using regular traditional paprika and that'll help reduce some of the heat but play around with it this is a good measurement for you to get started with when it comes to using blackening season okay and you always want to make sure you season from high this allows you to get an even distribution of your seasonings hold on you see that he didn't think he was going to get no love on him all right so now we're gonna go ahead on and do the same thing on the skin side flip it over beautiful and just go ahead on and season it do not be scared to put any seasoning on here in louisiana we need to see our seasoning that means it was done with love all right you don't want that's not black and chicken that that is not acceptable you want to go ahead on and cope you see all these spices we got here is that for a reason baby there you go go ahead on season it all the way up you want to season this to the point where you say man that's a lot of seasoning beautiful beautiful beautiful especially the skin side this is the presentation side so we want that to look nice and glorious look at that that's blackening chicken baby so the beautiful thing about this this is one of the newer techniques in the cajun creole repertoire chef paul pudong created this back in the 1980s that guy was just on one when he just decided to make this he took some melted butter and some red fish and created this dish the dish became so popular we almost made redfish extinct in louisiana so shout out to chef paul prudong you see this right here this is what you're looking for a piping hot smoking skillet if you don't know one thing about blackened chicken fish shrimp mushrooms sweet potatoes don't matter you need hot fat and a hot skillet let's see that's the sound you're looking for oh yeah get in there now some of our seasoning has stuck don't worry about that we got a little bit left over now cast on is my preferred skillet because it has the most even conduction of heat and it gets really piping hot you can use a non-stick skillet in the house but i promise you you will know the difference between that nonstick skillet and your cast iron skillet now we're just going to let this cook for two to three minutes until it gets a nice deep golden brown or blackened now it's been about three to four minutes and you can see this little white stuff coming out that's the that's the stuff we don't want in us but you also can notice that it's starting to turn nice and white moment of truth you got to be happy about that oh yeah look at that now this is great this is great what this is telling me right now is that my greatest heat source is this way not this way this is just something to keep in mind while you're cooking different heat sources distribute heat differently so it's just always good to keep that in mind on what you're doing so now this chicken is finished i'm going to finish my next batch you guys should pause and do the same so our chicken breasts is almost finished you can see they all didn't get the same love that's evenly desired i'm pulling them all but don't let that worry you we're going to pop this into a 400 degree oven for 5 to 10 minutes until it reaches 165 degrees with an instant read thermometer or you can just cut the thickest part of the chicken breast and once it runs clear your money look at that beautifulness that right there so after letting the chicken cook for about five to ten minutes i've already attempted it looks amazing i'm gonna let it rest on the back burner for another five minutes so those juices get all in there and we get a nice tender piece of chicken okay now that our rice is finished let's go ahead on and finish our garnish so we're going to use some green onions we're going to save half of this for our rice and the other half for our garnish so have fun with it chop it as fine and evenly as possible and don't worry just remember when you're cutting it's like rocking the boat just rocking the boat you see that right there feel free to add some chopped italian parsley to this give you a nice full body dish moment of truth let's see if our rice is actually cooked oh oh did y'all hear the angels saw singing did you hear that did you hear it so for safety i'm going to remove the bay leaf now and i'm going to take half of my green onions and add them in and now we're just going to fluff the rice do you all see that it smells like love in this kitchen you can smell the onions the celery the bell pepper and even that hint of tomato paste that we added you can smell all of those flavors starting to come out this is going to be a good eat all right let's plate up nothing like a well-balanced meal now the great thing about the rice pilaf is it's a great way to sneak vegetables in to get your kids to actually eat their vegetables at dinner just don't tell them what's in it a nice healthy serving of rice i like to create a nice little bed right in the center put just a little bit of green onions just for flavor and i've already picked out which chicken breast i want now it's completely optional you can serve this just like that or you can slice it up like we're about to do always cut on a nice little 45 degree angle it gives you those beautiful nice little restaurant presentations i know i'm thinking the same thing you're thinking this looks fantastic and i can't wait to dive in come on now look at that garnish it with some more green onions just across the top let me clean up whoa i want to get right there look at that piece one bite rice chicken you know if i could high-five myself i would do it perfectly cooked rice not too over-seasoned not under-seasoned and we did that for a particular reason because of the amount of seasoning that we had on our chicken good tender it's not spicy at all it is just well seasoned now not spicy for me but it may be a little spicy for you so just remember if you're looking at the recipe and you think it's too much cayenne you can pull back a quarter teaspoon on the cayenne the black pepper and the white pepper and they'll give you less heat but this right here this is cajun cooking at its best i think paul pruden will give me a round of applause for this one right here youi'm kenneth temple and welcome to my class i'm so excited that you decided to join me today because we are making blackened chicken with creole rice pilaf this occasion creole classic is so misunderstood but very easy to make all you need is some melted butter and a piping hot cast on skillet make sure you open up a window let's get cooking before we begin make sure you have two sticks of unsalted melted butter make sure that you have two baking sheets lined with aluminum foil and also make sure that you have your oven preheated to 400 degrees let's get in the kitchen let's get in the kitchen and start to cook i got some rice peel off that i'm about to cook so to get this thing started we're going to take a onion half of an onion that is and we're going to cut them down the middle in creole cooking we always use a spanish onion a white onion can work for this recipe too but a spanish onion will give you that full cajun creole experience now between me and you the first level onion is always testing your patience because it's going to slide off sometime but sometimes it's going to actually work so we're just going to chop down this onion for this beautiful rice pilaf and the only thing that really makes the rice pilaf different from other rice dishes is that you're actually cooking some vegetables in it that's what makes a rice pilaf a pilaf you know you can do any type of vegetable you love in it so now we're gonna go ahead on and chop down a half of a bell pepper did you see how easy that was just follow the groove of the bell pepper and you don't have to worry about any seeds any pith life is easy so we're gonna go ahead on and chop down a half of a bell pepper i decided to go with red because the rice pilaf you're gonna still see all the beautiful white grains from our white rice but feel free to use a green a yellow orange bell pepper all right no rules for the bell peppers look at that nice and pretty so we're gonna also slice down two stalks of celery now if you haven't chopped down celery this is the easiest way is you just want to get it full length and drag it or just take it and chop it the options jurors welcome to the cajun creole cooking with ken and temple on the food network kitchen all right so we're just gonna go ahead on and dice our celery now you can begin to see the beautiful colors of our creole rice pilaf and we have our trinity the holy trinity onions celery and bell pepper you don't have to use red bell pepper but do note that the red yellow and orange are much more sweeter than the green now let's go ahead on and start cooking so we're going to cut our pot on a medium heat and i'm going to add one tablespoon of oil and one tablespoon of butter now adding the oil in the butter is gonna do two things it's gonna definitely add more flavor but adding the oil is gonna keep the butter from burning and no nobody want no burnt butter okay we're saving that for the black cue nice soft brass band music while this melts envision yourself walking down bourbon street in the french quarter watch your step so we're just going to add all of our trinity into this here's a sneaky secret i love to add just a pinch of salt to whatever i'm cooking to help bring out the moisture in the vegetables which is going to help them cook a whole lot faster now that does not count against our salt requirements it's just a little pinch while this cooks for a few minutes we're going to go ahead on and chop down our garlic so i'm going to take two cloves of garlic always remember the one rule about garlic you can add as much as you love and take out what you really don't like these two garlic cloves is just perfect for me so we're just going to go ahead on and mince them you can always use a garlic press if you love make that happen and enjoy it but you want to get it nice and chopped and fine oh yeah you can just smell the onions celery and bell pepper just starting to perfume the whole house that's what good cooking's all about look at how beautiful that looks now we're gonna add two cups of rice to our pot and what we're going to do now is we're going to make sure that the rice is evenly coated with all of the fat that we have in here so look at that that's what you want to see nice beautiful coated grains of rice with all of the fat okay now we're going to add our bay leaf we're going to add our garlic we're going to add three tablespoons of tomato paste this is bringing the creole this is gonna be the tomato paste it's gonna give it a beautiful red color and also the tomatoes gonna add a depth of flavor also to that i'm gonna add one teaspoon of garlic powder one teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of black pepper stir it up you know bob olly was on to something when he created the song stir it up you know he definitely was thinking about good cooking you can already start to see as the rice is getting nice and coated with that tomato paste and it's adding a beautiful color so now that that's ready we're going to add four and a quarter cups of stock to this here now that we have all of our rice fully coated with our liquid stock that is you want to grab a fork so you can make sure that you stir this properly we're also trying to make sure that we break up the tomato paste and that is not just sitting in clumps okay that looks fantastic the great thing about rice pilaf is that you can either store it in the fridge for about seven days or put it into the freezer for about three months the option is completely yours so once it comes up to a full ball i'm going to cover it slide it to my other burner over a low fire so it can cook for about 15 to 20 minutes creole rice pilaf smell it think about it it's in the works now that our rice is at a full boil what i'm going to do is cover it and slide it to a cooler burner let this cook on a lower temperature for 15 to 20 minutes let's get to the blackened chicken so let's make this blackened chicken the first thing we want to do is we want to get our cast iron skillet or skillet up to smoking point now you can use any skillet you want i prefer cast iron just because of the even heat distribution that it has but you can also use a non-stick skillet that's large enough to do it but if you can get a cast iron go ahead this will be the time now we can do three things at once while this is coming up to temperature let's make our beautiful blackened seasoning so we're gonna add one tablespoon of hot paprika we're gonna add two and one quarter teaspoons of kosher salt you can use sea salt if you want we're going to add one teaspoon of black pepper then we're going to also add one and a half teaspoons of granulated garlic one and a half teaspoons of granulated onion then we're going to add three quarters of a teaspoon of dried oregano three quarters of a teaspoon of dried thyme three quarters of a teaspoon of cayenne and yes you've guessed it three quarters of a teaspoon of white pepper now we're going to take a fork and just go ahead on and blitz it together stir it on up so as you can see all of our seasonings is nice and evenly distributed oh yeah that's the taste of louisiana right there baby now you're supposed to have two sheet pans lined in foil one we're going to use for our chicken that we're going to dip into the butter and then season the other keep it to the side as we cook our blackened chicken we'll put the cooked chicken on this because this is going into a 400 degree oven let's make it happen baby now what we're going to do is we're going to take some tongs you can use some gloves if you want and we're going to dip our chicken on both sides in this butter you want this chicken to go on a butter vacation okay you don't want this chicken thinking about saving any calories make sure you place it skin side down and the reason we're doing this is once we finish seasoning on the skin side that's going to be our presentation side that's going right into the hot skillet so cut on some music get your little song in your head while you dip and dredge your chicken in butter all right don't worry about shaking off no excess we want that extra butter to go on the chicken you always want to make sure that your chicken is room temperature because if you have cold chicken what the chicken is going to do is that extra coldness is going to actually seize the butter and then you're going to end up with cold butter you want this butter nice and melted so once it hit that skillet it can make the sound of love making which is the sound that we all love okay now we're going to evenly season all of this chicken on both sides now when it comes to blackening seasoning you can add a little bit more a little bit less of that i say one thing that you probably can save yourself on is just using regular traditional paprika and that'll help reduce some of the heat but play around with it this is a good measurement for you to get started with when it comes to using blackening season okay and you always want to make sure you season from high this allows you to get an even distribution of your seasonings hold on you see that he didn't think he was going to get no love on him all right so now we're gonna go ahead on and do the same thing on the skin side flip it over beautiful and just go ahead on and season it do not be scared to put any seasoning on here in louisiana we need to see our seasoning that means it was done with love all right you don't want that's not black and chicken that that is not acceptable you want to go ahead on and cope you see all these spices we got here is that for a reason baby there you go go ahead on season it all the way up you want to season this to the point where you say man that's a lot of seasoning beautiful beautiful beautiful especially the skin side this is the presentation side so we want that to look nice and glorious look at that that's blackening chicken baby so the beautiful thing about this this is one of the newer techniques in the cajun creole repertoire chef paul pudong created this back in the 1980s that guy was just on one when he just decided to make this he took some melted butter and some red fish and created this dish the dish became so popular we almost made redfish extinct in louisiana so shout out to chef paul prudong you see this right here this is what you're looking for a piping hot smoking skillet if you don't know one thing about blackened chicken fish shrimp mushrooms sweet potatoes don't matter you need hot fat and a hot skillet let's see that's the sound you're looking for oh yeah get in there now some of our seasoning has stuck don't worry about that we got a little bit left over now cast on is my preferred skillet because it has the most even conduction of heat and it gets really piping hot you can use a non-stick skillet in the house but i promise you you will know the difference between that nonstick skillet and your cast iron skillet now we're just going to let this cook for two to three minutes until it gets a nice deep golden brown or blackened now it's been about three to four minutes and you can see this little white stuff coming out that's the that's the stuff we don't want in us but you also can notice that it's starting to turn nice and white moment of truth you got to be happy about that oh yeah look at that now this is great this is great what this is telling me right now is that my greatest heat source is this way not this way this is just something to keep in mind while you're cooking different heat sources distribute heat differently so it's just always good to keep that in mind on what you're doing so now this chicken is finished i'm going to finish my next batch you guys should pause and do the same so our chicken breasts is almost finished you can see they all didn't get the same love that's evenly desired i'm pulling them all but don't let that worry you we're going to pop this into a 400 degree oven for 5 to 10 minutes until it reaches 165 degrees with an instant read thermometer or you can just cut the thickest part of the chicken breast and once it runs clear your money look at that beautifulness that right there so after letting the chicken cook for about five to ten minutes i've already attempted it looks amazing i'm gonna let it rest on the back burner for another five minutes so those juices get all in there and we get a nice tender piece of chicken okay now that our rice is finished let's go ahead on and finish our garnish so we're going to use some green onions we're going to save half of this for our rice and the other half for our garnish so have fun with it chop it as fine and evenly as possible and don't worry just remember when you're cutting it's like rocking the boat just rocking the boat you see that right there feel free to add some chopped italian parsley to this give you a nice full body dish moment of truth let's see if our rice is actually cooked oh oh did y'all hear the angels saw singing did you hear that did you hear it so for safety i'm going to remove the bay leaf now and i'm going to take half of my green onions and add them in and now we're just going to fluff the rice do you all see that it smells like love in this kitchen you can smell the onions the celery the bell pepper and even that hint of tomato paste that we added you can smell all of those flavors starting to come out this is going to be a good eat all right let's plate up nothing like a well-balanced meal now the great thing about the rice pilaf is it's a great way to sneak vegetables in to get your kids to actually eat their vegetables at dinner just don't tell them what's in it a nice healthy serving of rice i like to create a nice little bed right in the center put just a little bit of green onions just for flavor and i've already picked out which chicken breast i want now it's completely optional you can serve this just like that or you can slice it up like we're about to do always cut on a nice little 45 degree angle it gives you those beautiful nice little restaurant presentations i know i'm thinking the same thing you're thinking this looks fantastic and i can't wait to dive in come on now look at that garnish it with some more green onions just across the top let me clean up whoa i want to get right there look at that piece one bite rice chicken you know if i could high-five myself i would do it perfectly cooked rice not too over-seasoned not under-seasoned and we did that for a particular reason because of the amount of seasoning that we had on our chicken good tender it's not spicy at all it is just well seasoned now not spicy for me but it may be a little spicy for you so just remember if you're looking at the recipe and you think it's too much cayenne you can pull back a quarter teaspoon on the cayenne the black pepper and the white pepper and they'll give you less heat but this right here this is cajun cooking at its best i think paul pruden will give me a round of applause for this one right here you\n"