Chicken Crepes (Nalysnyky) with Fried Onion Filling
Surely, as soon as people learned to grind grain into flour, the first thing they made was a thin batter fried on a hot stone. Consider those the very first crepes.
Thin crepes, also called nalysnyky, palachinki and so on, are a dish of world cuisine: a kind of pancake made with milk and without any leavening, starter or yeast. As a rule, they're sweet, with sweet fillings. But very often they get meat or fish fillings, mushrooms or cheese. Thin crepes are often cooked on one side only. They also make wonderful layered crepe cakes.
The beauty of crepes is that you can make a big batch quickly, wrap any filling in them, stack them in the fridge, and your meals are sorted for the whole week.
All you need to do is reheat them. Thin crepes with chicken are an easy and very affordable option. You can make the nalysnyky from any recipe you know. A few chicken breasts, some soup roots and ordinary onions make a superb filling.
Every nation has its own kind of thin crepes: Ukrainian mlyntsi, Bulgarian palachinki, French crêpes, English pancakes, Indian dosa, American pancakes and more.
Ingredients
20-25 crepes
- Thin crepes (nalysnyky) 20-25
- Chicken breast fillets 4
- Onions 5-7
- Butter 1 tbsp
- Olive oil 3-4 tbsp
- Celery root, parsley root, carrot, onion for the broth
- Salt, bay leaf, black pepper, curry powder, chili pod to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Make thin crepes, or nalysnyky, as they're called. Everyone usually has their own recipe for thin crepes. For example, you can make as many as you need using my nalysnyky recipe. You'll need eggs, flour, milk and a small piece of pork fat.
- Trim any leftover fat and membranes from the chicken breasts. Before cooking the breasts through, I recommend covering them with water and bringing it just to a boil. As soon as a lot of foam starts forming, rinse the chicken with water, and then cook it until done.
- Pour water into a pot and add a bay leaf, black peppercorns, allspice berries, celery and parsley roots, a carrot and an onion. Add the prepared chicken breasts and cook until done. Cooking time is 20-30 minutes. That's enough.
- Once the chicken is cooked, take it out of the broth and let it cool. Strain the broth and set it aside for now. Cover the cooling chicken with a plate or cloth so it doesn't dry out.
- For a juicy, tasty dish you need plenty of fried onion. Peel the onions and finely chop them with a knife.
- Heat the olive oil in a deep frying pan, then fry the chopped onion in it. Add the spices: salt, ground black pepper, 1-2 bay leaves and a pinch of curry powder or turmeric. I recommend adding a dried chili pod: it adds aroma but not heat. Fry the onion until nicely browned; it should be properly fried, not soft or sweated, but really fried. Plus, the curry will give it a yellow color.
- Put the cooked chicken breasts through a meat grinder.
- Combine the ground chicken and the fried onion and season with salt and pepper to taste if you like. Usually it isn't needed, since all the spices went into the onion. Add some of the strained chicken broth so the filling is juicy but not runny. Mix thoroughly.
- Thin crepes are usually stacked on a big plate. Then, as a friend of mine says, whatever you like: condensed milk, honey, jam, preserves. But I like mine with chicken.
- Put 1 1/2-2 heaping tablespoons of the chicken and fried onion filling on the edge of each crepe.
- Wrap the filling in the crepe like an envelope, and you have crepes with chicken. Really, they can be any shape and folded any way you like.
- Usually (I have no idea why it works out this way) you're a couple of crepes short and have filling left over. Or the other way around.
- In the first case, the filling gets happily eaten with a spoon and washed down with tomato juice. In the second, the extra crepes get spread with jam or honey and eaten with tea or just like that.
- Crepes with chicken keep in the fridge for a long time in an airtight plastic container. Reheat them in a frying pan as needed, depending on your appetite.
- Melt a piece of butter in a frying pan and put in as many crepes as you need. Important: the heat under the pan shouldn't be too high.
- Fry the chicken crepes on one side over low heat, covered, so the filling warms through. When one side is golden, you can turn up the heat and fry the other side, uncovered.
- Serve hot; if you like, drizzle with a little melted butter.
- Extra sides or garnishes are completely unnecessary. And pouring ketchup from a packet over the crepes is strictly forbidden.
| Serves: | 20-25 crepes |
| Calories: | 155 |
| Prep: | 30 mins |
| Cook: | 30 mins |
| Total: | 60 mins |
| Category: | Pancakes |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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4.8
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