Chicken Recipes

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Tom Papoutsis
 

Tom Papoutsis is a “Firehouse Chef” that currently holds the rank of Lieutenant with the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. Tom’s experience in the Fire Service spans over 30 years, 20 of which have been with Fairfax County. The bulk of his firehouse culinary expertise has been practiced during his tenure there. He was a national finalist in the 2004 Tabasco Cook & Ladder Competition finishing in the top 10 of the nations Firehouse Chef’s, and traveled to New York City to compete in a cook off with his peers. He has also been placed on the “charity” auction block several times to prepare meals for the highest bidder.

Tom likes to specialize in Italian and Greek cuisine being of the same heritage, but also enjoys preparing Asian and of course “Good Ole American” foods as well. He concentrates on entrées but also has a few hors d’oeuvres and dessert specialties as well, such as his versions of Bruschetta and Amaretto Cheesecake. For the past year he has been studying the practice of making homemade Italian deli meats and sausages. Tom’s motto: “It’s just cooking, not rocket science, take a chance…you might like it!”

Residing in Chambersburg, PA with his wife JoAnn, twins Jonathan & Katie and “Buddy” their Golden Retriever. Tom enjoys cycling, hunting, fishing, woodworking, raising his children and helping form today’s youth while volunteering with son Jonathan’s Cub Scout pack.

Chicken Recipes

This video series will show several recipes for chicken dishes. This video will explain the basics of preparing and cooking a chicken, as well as various recipes you can make.

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Transcripts

Tom Papoutsis: Hi, I am Tom Papoutsis. I have been a Firehouse Chef for a lot of years and today, I am going to be passing on to you some tips on what we can do with chicken. So today, we are going to be working with chicken basics. Essentially, what we are going to be doing we are going to start out by cutting a chicken up. We are going to take a whole chicken, we are going to cut the chicken up, then we are going to basically work on what we can do with the chicken. Marinades, rubs, how to bake the chicken, how to fry the chicken, today we are going to be using just regular household kitchen tools. Cutting board, knife as far as the marinades, rubs and what not, we are going to be using regular spices, oils, some vinegars and stuff that we are going to do with that. We will go through that when we get to each individual portion as to what we are going to do with this chicken. Let's talk about safety first. When you are handling chicken, chicken can of course, any meat that we handle has bacteria. We certainly want to make sure we wash it, just rinse it off real good to get started and then anything that we use our knife, our cutting board, we want to make sure that we don't cross-contaminate. Part of what I am using the gloves for today, these gloves are just regular, these are actually a non-latex type of gloves that you see EMS people wear.

The gloves help as far as handling the chicken, once you are handling it everything stays on the gloves, you peel the gloves off, you throw them away and then you go on to the next thing that you are doing. So before we begin, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I have been in the Fire Department for 25 years, I have been cooking in a firehouse for about 20 years of that and in the firehouse cooking meals in a firehouse were on shoe string budget. So we have to be able to get as much as we can for our money that is why we will take a whole chicken that we get on sale and we are going to cut this thing up and this is what I am going to show you.

You can take this thing and cut it into the different pieces and not pay somebody else to cut it up in order to prepare it. So with that, let's get started with chicken basics.

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