Best of the best: How to make the ultimate chicken kyiv

The chicken kyiv (or kiev as it was called until recently) achieved fame in the UK as a frozen ready-meal in 1979. For many, the chicken meat with its perfect rounded pocket of scalding, molten garlic butter seemed the height of sophistication, but over the years the novelty wore off and the dish fell out of favour, a symbol of 1980s naffness.

Recently, stuffing things with garlic butter has enjoyed a renaissance, especially in trendy restaurants. From cod to cauliflower, I’ve seen just about everything get the kyiv treatment. No surprise, really, as stuffing anything with a punchy garlic butter generally improves it tenfold.

Chicken, however, is the original and still the best vehicle to contain that delicious oozy centre. Chicken kyiv is also (thankfully) an easy thing to serve as it can be prepared a little in advance, making it ideal fodder for entertaining or having on-hand for a treat on a Friday night. Here’s how to make chicken kyiv the best it can be, with no leaking butter, an even, golden crunchy crumb and juicy, tender meat.

Choose chicken breast over thighs

I can count on one hand how many dishes are better made with chicken breast over the fattier, more flavourful thigh. Chicken kyiv is one of them. When cooked, chicken breasts can often be a bit bland and dry because they contain hardly any fat (and fat gives flavour and keeps meat moist). With this kyiv, however, we add our own fat in the form of a garlic butter, which bastes the meat from the inside out. The chicken is also coated in breadcrumbs, then fried, which creates a hot pocket of steam locking in yet more moisture. And I think the breast has a better shape to safely cocoon the butter without it leaking out during cooking.

Making better garlic butter

Your bog-standard garlic butter contains – well, garlic and butter. Perhaps with a few chopped fresh herbs if it’s feeling fancy. For the best-of-the-best garlic butter, however, we need to go all-out. Anchovies for salty umami (don’t worry, it won’t taste fishy); capers for tang; a lick of chilli (optional) for subtle heat; and a heap of soft herbs for a fresh, aromatic finish.

It’s the garlic that’s the star of the show in a kyiv, though, so I tested it in a few different forms (roasted, fried, raw and a mixture of all three). Perhaps surprisingly it was the raw garlic that fared best, getting heated through just enough in the butter to remove its raw edge but still keeping its punchy flavour.

With all the other ingredients in the butter, it’s an incredible thing to have in the freezer, so it’s worth making a bigger batch and using it to baste and infuse other dishes.

The crucial breadcrumbs

I tested fresh, fine and panko breadcrumbs for kyiv and, as I suspected, panko came out top. Thanks to their coarser, more irregular texture, they crisped up better than the others. They also didn’t absorb as much egg as the fresh or fine breadcrumbs, creating a better seal to stop the butter leaking out, but it’s still essential to double-dip your kyiv in the egg and breadcrumbs to lock in the filling.

And if you want that perfectly even, golden finish, it’s best to breadcrumb the kyiv right before it gets cooked. Do it in advance and it’ll still be delicious, but there’s more risk of ending up with a patchy finish as the egg slowly seeps into the panko.

How to cook chicken kyiv

To fry or to bake? Although chicken kyiv is traditionally deep-fried, I tested the recipe with a baked version, because deep-frying at home can be a pain. I’m afraid to say a baked kyiv was not a success; it turned out limp, pale and dry rather than golden and crunchy. But you don’t need to use litres of oil to cook kyiv – shallow-frying works just as well. You do need to make sure the oil is nice and hot before you add the chicken, though, otherwise the crumbs will absorb the oil and turn greasy.

What to serve with chicken kyiv

A kyiv is a truly beautiful thing, but it needs a side to turn it into a full meal. For my money nothing beats a bed of buttery mashed potato which, when you cut into the kyiv and release that torrent of molten butter, catches all the flavour and becomes even more decadent. Butter on butter may sound like an overload, but in the case of kyiv, it works.

Ready to cook? Here’s the best-of-the-best chicken kyiv recipe. Plus, browse the complete best-of-the-best collection, including fish pie, caesar salad and risotto alla milanese.