Name: Galantine (Boned Bird Rebuilt Inside Its Own Skin)
Prep time: 1 h 40 min
Cook time: 3 h 30 min
Total time: 5 h 10 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 1.6 kg whole chicken; 1 onion; 1 carrot; 1 stick celery; 2 bay leaves; 1 tsp peppercorns; 2.5 L water; 400 g chicken leg meat; 250 g pork shoulder; 150 g pork back fat; 14 g salt; 1 tsp white pepper; 0.25 tsp nutmeg; 1 egg white; 60 ml double cream; 2 tbsp cognac; 2 chicken breast fillets; 60 g pistachios; 100 g cooked ham; 1 sheet muslin or cheesecloth; 1 kitchen string

Ingredients

8servings

The bird and the stock (serves 8)
whole chicken · it has to be whole; a jointed bird cannot be boned this way1.6 kg
onion · halved1
carrot1
celery1 stick
bay leaves2
peppercorns1 tsp
water2.5 L
The forcemeat (farce)
chicken leg meat · off the bird you boned400 g
pork shoulder · cut into 2cm pieces250 g
pork back fat · cold; this is what keeps the forcemeat tender150 g
salt · 1.8% of the total meat; its job is to draw the protein out14 g
white pepper1 tsp
nutmeg · freshly grated0.25 tsp
egg white1
double cream · cold60 ml
cognac · or brandy2 tbsp
Set into the middle (garniture)
chicken breast fillets · kept whole2
pistachios · shelled60 g
cooked ham · in 1cm dice100 g
To wrap and tie
muslin or cheesecloth · about 50 x 40cm1 sheet
kitchen string1

Steps

Bone it out through the back. Lay the bird breast-down and cut one line along the backbone from neck to tail. Keeping the knife against bone, work the flesh and skin off the ribcage on each side, and cut the wing and leg joints from the inside. The aim is to end up with the skin in one piece with no holes in it. The first time takes about 40 minutes and a couple of holes is normal — they get sewn later.
⏲ 40 min
Put the carcass, neck and wing tips in the water with the onion, carrot, celery, bay and peppercorns and simmer 2 hours as gently as it will go. Never let it boil, and skim it: this liquid becomes the jelly, so a cloudy stock is a cloudy jelly. The reasons are in stocks and broths. No salt.
⏲ 120 min
Take the two breast fillets off whole and set them aside. Trim the leg meat of skin and sinew for the forcemeat. Spread the skin on a wetted board and keep it in the fridge.
⏲ 20 min
Put the leg meat, pork shoulder, back fat and the grinder parts in the freezer for 20 minutes. This is the reason weisswurst says the whole dish is decided by a thermometer: past about 12°C the fat melts and smears and the mixture breaks.
⏲ 20 min
Mince the cold meat on a coarse plate, add the salt, pepper and nutmeg and work it hard for 3-4 minutes. When it is tacky on your hand and pulls into threads, the protein is out. Mix in the egg white, cream and cognac, then fold the pistachios and ham in by hand.
⏲ 10 min
Poach a small spoonful and taste it. You cannot taste raw forcemeat for seasoning, so skipping this means finding out at the table.
⏲ 5 min
Spread the skin on a damp cloth, inside face up, and season it. Lay half the forcemeat along it in a strip about 15cm wide, set the two breast fillets end to end down the middle, and cover with the rest. Roll the skin into a cylinder, seam upward, and sew the seam and any holes closed.
⏲ 20 min
Wrap it tightly in the cloth like a sweet, tie both ends, then tie round the body every 3cm. Do not tie it hard — the forcemeat swells slightly as it cooks, and a drum-tight seam is the first one to split.
⏲ 10 min
Lower it into the strained stock and poach at 70-80°C for 1 hour 15 minutes. The odd bubble should break the surface and no more; it must never boil, because the forcemeat is an emulsion that gives up its fat past 80°C and the skin tears if it tightens fast. It is done at a core temperature of 72°C.
⏲ 75 min
Turn the heat off and let it cool in the liquid until lukewarm. Lift it out, re-tighten the cloth, set it on a plate under a light weight of about 1kg and refrigerate overnight. The collagen sets in that time and fixes the shape.
⏲ 60 min
Reduce the remaining stock by half and chill a spoonful to check that it sets; if it does not, reduce it further. Next day unwrap and unpick the string and cut into 1cm slices, served with the jelly chopped alongside. Cornichons and mustard with it.
⏲ 30 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

What separates it from a terrine is the skin. A terrine packs forcemeat into a ceramic mould and bakes it in a water bath, and the mould makes the shape. A galantine has no mould — the animal's skin is the mould — so it is poached in water instead. Pâté en croûte is the third case, where pastry is the mould.
It is the inverse construction of pyeonyuk. Pyeonyuk keeps one piece of meat's grain intact and presses it hot so the dissolved collagen sets between the fibres and glues them — nothing is added. A galantine grinds the grain away entirely and rebuilds it as a cylinder the animal never had. Two sliceable blocks of meat: one preserves the structure, one discards it.
The casing lineage: sundae buys pig intestine and fills it, and weisswurst uses sheep casings. A galantine has no casing to buy — the skin of the animal you are cooking is the casing. The same idea as ojingeo-sundae using a squid mantle, except a mantle is a muscle that contracts as it cooks while chicken skin is collagen, which tightens and then sets on cooling.
Duck and pheasant: it was originally made with duck, pheasant and suckling pig. Duck is fatty enough that the back fat should be halved.
Ballotine: the same skin and forcemeat rolled into a single leg rather than a whole cylinder, and served hot. A galantine is served cold.
Set in jelly: arrange the slices and pour the reduced stock over to set the whole thing, and you have an aspic. Eisbein says the same thing in its variations — there is so much gelatine from the skin and sinew that it sets with nothing added.
Skipping the boning: a butcher will bone a bird through the back and leave the skin in one piece if you ask. It is the longest job in the recipe and it has no bearing on the flavour.

Tips

The skin is an ingredient. Tear it and the forcemeat leaks out during the poach. When boning, keep the knife edge against the bone at all times and never push it towards the skin.
Keep everything cold — meat, fat, cream, even the grinder parts. A forcemeat that goes lukewarm breaks, and a broken one cannot be brought back.
Salt goes in before you work it. Added at the end it never draws the protein out and the forcemeat stays crumbly. The salt is not seasoning here, it is the binder.
Do not salt the stock. It gets reduced by half, so a stock seasoned correctly at the start is a jelly that is twice too salty.
Boiling it is fatal. Past 80°C, beads of fat rise to the surface and that fat does not go back in. Use a thermometer, or keep the water at a barely visible shiver.
The overnight cannot be shortened. Sliced warm it collapses; the gelatine has to set before a knife will go through it.
Cold food needs more salt. For the reasons in serving temperature, seasoning judged lukewarm reads flat when chilled. Cool the test spoonful before you taste it.

The basics behind this dish

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