Braised Nigella-Scented Chicken Breast Boats
Chicken breasts seasoned with crushed nigella seeds, with a spiced spinach and tomato mixture inside a boat-shaped pocket. Sop up the extra white wine braising sauce with a crusty baguette or a side of rice.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
Braised chicken breast boats stuffed with spinach and tomatoes, infused with nigella seeds, mustard seeds and fennel seeds.
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Half a lemon
Coarse salt (I use Diamond Crystal; if you’re using table salt, use half the amounts called for throughout)
1.5 teaspoons nigella seeds, divided
Ground black pepper
Flavorless high-heat oil of your choice
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 cup diced yellow onions (medium dice)
1/2 fresh serrano chile, minced (or more/less to taste, see notes)
1 garlic clove, minced
4 peeled plum tomatoes from a can (see notes)
5 oz baby spinach
1/2 cup dry white wine or dry French vermouth
Optional: 1 tablespoon heavy cream (for a more refined sauce, see optional Step 12)
Instructions:
Crush and prep the nigella seeds:
1) Crush 1 teaspoon of the nigella seeds in a mortar and pestle until soft and powdery. In a small dish, combine the crushed nigella seeds with 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Prep the chicken breasts:
2) Pat chicken breasts dry and remove the tenderloins if they’re still attached. Lay the breasts on their sides, with the smooth edge facing away from you. Use a paring knife to slice a half-moon shaped pocket opening horizontally into each breast, leaving about an inch of meat at the end of the breast all the way around. Be careful not to make a hole by slicing all the way through the meat. (If you do, see instructions for a fix in Step 9.)
3) Transfer the chicken breasts to a baking dish or large plate. Squeeze the juice from the half lemon over the chicken breasts, turning them to get a little juice on all the outer surfaces. Sprinkle the nigella-salt mixture evenly over the outer surfaces of all the breasts, followed by several grinds of black pepper. Set the dish aside to rest while you make the spinach.
Make the spiced spinach-tomato filling:
4) Bloom the spices: Heat 2 tablespoon of the oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high. Test the temperature by dropping 2 fennel seeds into the oil: they should immediately sizzle and almost move a little, but not color. If the sizzle seems lackluster, or if they begin to brown too quickly, adjust the heat as needed. When the temperature is ready, add the fennel seeds and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon nigella seeds to bloom in the oil, quickly tossing them together, then add the mustard seeds. Be careful: If you have the correct temperature, the mustard seeds will start popping and jumping out of the pan like popcorn after about a second and a half, so have the lid of the pan ready to act as a shield, holding it lightly over the top of the pan as needed to keep from getting burned by popping mustard seeds and oil. You’re ready to move on as soon as the popping subsides (about 30 seconds or so).
5) Add the onions and chile to the pan and turn the heat to medium, tossing them occasionally for about 5 minutes until they soften. Add the garlic and toss just until fragrant.
6) Add the plum tomatoes to the pan, crushing each of them in your hand before dropping them into the pan. (Be careful to get their tasty juices in the pan, and not squirt them all over your shirt! I speak from experience.) Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, stir, turn the heat to low and cover. Simmer for about 5 minutes.
7) Add the baby spinach to the pan, turning the leaves in the tomato mixture just until they’re wilted. Transfer the spinach mixture to a bowl, along with all their juices and tomato-y goodness.
Start the chicken:
8) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees with the rack in the middle position. Wipe out the Dutch oven and return it to the stove over highest heat. Add 2 tablespoons oil. When shimmering, brown each chicken breast in the hot oil, one at a time (so you don’t crowd the pan), turning to get good color on both flat sides of each piece. Adjust the heat as needed to prevent the browned bits on the bottom of the pan from burning. As the breasts are finished browning, transfer them to a rimmed baking dish (the edges of the dish will help to support them once they’re stuffed).
9) As each piece finishes browning, stuff it with 1/4 of the spinach filling while the next piece browns. There should be just enough to fill all four breasts very generously. As you fill each breast, prop it up in the rimmed dish so that it stands with the pocket opening facing up. If you made any holes when you cut the pockets, you can use toothpicks to suture them somewhat closed. (They won’t be completely closed, and they may not be quite as beautiful at the end, but everything will still cook properly and be delicious, so don’t worry!) When you’ve used all the filling, reserve any juices or small bits of the mixture that remain in the bottom of the bowl.
10) When you remove the last breast from the Dutch oven, quickly pour the wine into the pan and use a wooden spatula to deglaze it, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom. Once the pan has been fully scraped and the wine has lost its raw smell and just begun to reduce in volume, turn the heat to low and cover it until you’re ready to add all the chicken pieces back in.
11) When all the chicken pieces are stuffed and ready, position them in the Dutch oven so they’re propped against the sides of the pan and each other with their open pockets facing up. Pour all the remaining juices from the baking dish, and from the spinach bowl, over the chicken pieces. Briefly bring the pot back to a simmer (partially covered if needed), then put the lid on snugly and slide the pot into the oven. Bake for about 18-25 minutes, until the spinach filling registers 165 degrees on a thermometer. (Insert the thermometer down through the middle of the stuffing until you feel the resistance of the bottom of the breast.)
Optional step for a more refined sauce:
You can serve this dish right out of the pot, straight from the oven, with generous spoonfuls of sauce scooped over each one. This is how I’ve been serving it to my family, and it’s delish! But, if you want to impress your guests with a slightly more refined sauce, you can do Step 12:
12) Transfer the stuffed breasts to a platter and keep warm. Pour the sauce through a fine mesh strainer, then return it to the pan. Taste the sauce; it should be intensely flavorful, but if it’s a bit too salty, add a splash or two of water. Bring it to a very brief simmer, then remove from heat and stir in the heavy cream. Taste again and adjust seasonings if necessary. You can either return the stuffed breasts to serve them out of the Dutch oven, or if you want to serve from the platter, pour some of the sauce over them and pass the rest for your guests to help themselves.
Notes:
This is such a fun presentation, with the chicken breasts standing up on the plate showing off the tasty spinach filling as it almost spills out of the top. The stuffed chicken breasts give the impression of a very large portion - the first time I made this, everyone in my family thought a single stuffed breast would be more than they could eat! But since they’re so tasty, and the filling is only vegetables, each of us ended up eating full pieces.
My Dutch oven is the 5 1/2 quart size (10.25” diameter), and depending on the size of the chicken breasts I happened to have, I could reliably fit 4 stuffed breasts in the pot, but in other rounds of testing I had enough room for a couple more. So depending on the size of your Dutch oven, if you’re feeding 6-8, you might be able to increase the recipe proportionately and make it work.
I originally published this recipe to share with our Spice Club LIVE Zoom cooking class in February 2023. Our featured spice was our organic nigella seeds, so I created this recipe to showcase them by using them in two ways: crushed as a seasoning, and bloomed whole in hot oil.
You definitely want to be generous with the sauce spooned over each serving. It’s absolutely delish, with the mingling flavors of all the ingredients pulling everything together. Also, serving this with rice is a boss move, so you can spoon that juicy goodness over everything on your plate. And if you have leftover sauce at the end, you can stir it into veggie rice bowls, or make a simple soup with it, or toss it with pasta.
In testing, I’ve used canned tomatoes both with and without salt listed as an ingredient, and the amount of salt called for here seemed to work either way. If your tomatoes are completely unsalted, you will likely need a bit more salt than I’ve called for here. And if your tomatoes happen to be more heavily salted than mine (the amount differs by brand), then you might need a bit less. To be on the safe side, you can use a tad less than I’ve called for when you’re making the spinach mixture, then taste and adjust as needed.