Your Cooking Lesson:

Advice, explanation, and in-depth information to help you achieve recipe success.

Throughout the summer my family eats lots of corn on the cob. At the beginning of the season we’re purists, enjoying it simply boiled, slathered with butter, and sprinkled with sea salt. Then, later, we look for variety, often grilling it and boldly seasoning it to make Mexican or Indian street corn. Finally, by late summer we’re ready for a corn dish of more complexity, the kernels sliced off the cobs and mingled with other summer vegetables. One of the very best of this genre is Cajun Maque Choux, a dish with deep, highly-developed flavor and lush mouthfeel.

Cajun cuisine exploded into North American food culture in the late 1970s and ’80s when first publicized by celebrity chefs such as Paul Prudhomme, most famous for the (in my opinion unfortunate) craze for “blackened” proteins. Nonetheless, he and other Louisiana chefs raised awareness of the state’s at the time largely unknown regional cuisines: Cajun and Creole. This recipe celebrates Cajun cuisine along with its unique flavors and cooking methods.

One of the most interesting recipes of Cajun cuisine is the corn-based side dish known Maque Choux. The name literally translates to “Mock Cabbage.” The reason for this name is obscure, but some food historians believe that the recipe originally was for cabbage but, in Louisiana, its main ingredient changed to sweet corn. (Inspired by this explanation, in winter months I’ve made the recipe substituting cabbage, and it’s pretty good.) Maque Choux traditionally is served as a side dish, but it can be transformed into a one-pan entrée by adding diced chicken, diced ham, or shrimp. This recipe presents Maque Choux as a bed for spice-rubbed grilled chicken breasts.

One of the hallmarks of both traditional and modern Cajun cuisine is complexity of flavor. Large Cajun families living in the Louisiana backwoods depended on subsistence farming, foraging, fishing, and hunting for food. When protein was scarce and there were many mouths to feed, Cajun cooks based their meals on starches such as rice, cornmeal, or biscuits, adding small amounts of meat, poultry, or seafood almost as a condiment. In the absence of much protein, they used lots of herbs, spices, and aromatic vegetables to intensify flavor. Stews (foremost among them the iconic Cajun gumbo) and “smothered” dishes made use of flavorful stocks that coaxed every last bit of flavor from fish frames or poultry carcasses, and long cooking reduced those stocks to concentrate their flavors.

The bold and deeply satisfying taste of Cajun cooking is achieved through three signature cooking techniques:

You’ll experience all three of these techniques when you make this recipe.

Let’s prep!

Your first prep step is to fabricate the chicken. For this recipe, as for all grilled or roasted recipes calling for chicken breast, I recommend using bone-in, skin-on breasts. This cut of chicken receives less processing and handling than the widely-available boneless, skinless breasts, in my opinion making it a better choice for both food safety and quality. The ideal fabrication method is to leave both bones and skin intact, because the bones hold in moisture and add collagen to the jus, whereas the skin self-bastes the meat as its solid fat melts in the presence of heat. However, intact bones make the chicken breast more difficult to eat and leave debris on the plate. So, the ideal compromise is to remove the bones (saving them to make stock) and keep the skin on.

Once you’ve boned out a chicken breast, you’ll notice that it’s thicker and wider at one end, and thinner and narrower at the other. So, to make two portions of equal weight, you can’t just cut it in half. Make the cut so that, looking down at the top of the chicken breast, the thick/wide end appears smaller and the thin/narrow end larger.

For even roasting, you’ll also need to equalize the thickness of the portions. Place the chicken breast pieces on one end of a sheet of parchment and fold the top of the sheet down over them. Use the smooth side of a meat mallet https://amzn.to/3W5ye7L (or the back of a small, sturdy sauté pan) to flatten the pieces to equal thickness.

Finally, sprinkle both the flesh side and the skin side with Cajun seasoning. and massage it in. If time allows, let the seasoning rub permeate into the chicken for 24 hour up to 3 days.

ALTERNATIVE: If you can’t find or don’t have time to deal with bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, you can use boneless, skinless breasts. Because they cook much more quickly and tend to be dry, follow the alternative directions in the recipe.

Next, fabricate a tomato: blanch, refresh, core, peel, halve, de-seed, and dice. More detailed directions are in the recipe.

Don’t be tempted to use canned or frozen corn kernels (which are par-cooked during processing), or pre-cooked fresh corn ears, to make authentic maque choux. This dish requires raw corn.

Here’s why: To achieve the characteristic browning that makes maque choux unique, you need the kernels’ raw starch to release, gelatinize, and then caramelize during the sauté phase of cooking. This is an important part of Cajun flavor building. (In subseqent photos you’ll see the caramelized starch clinging to the surface of the sauté pan, ready to be deglazed with liquid to help make a deeply complex sauce.) Pre-cooked corn’s starch content has already been denatured by the application of heat, so it won’t brown correctly.

Shuck the corn and remove as much silk as possible. To efficiently remove the kernels from the cobs hold each ear pointed-end-up with the base in a stainless steel bowl, and slice downward with a sharp, flexible boning knife. Cut as close to the cob as possible to retain the milky liquid that make corn juicy.

Here’s your mise tray:

It’s dinnertime—let’s COOK!

Set up your grill station with the tools specified in the recipe, and preheat the grill.

Then fabricate the herbs.

Making maque choux is a complex task, as it involves all three signature Cajun cooking techniques. You’ll start with pan-browning. Although the classic pan for cooking virtually all Cajun dishes is a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, I find that for maque choux a non-stick sauté pan is a safer and more efficient option. Using one helps ensure that the caramelized sugars lift easily from the surface and don’t scorch.

Heat some fat in the pan and then add the raw corn kernels with a pinch of salt. Sauté over medium heat until the kernels intensify in color and begin to smell sweet. Then continue sautéing, constantly stirring, until the corn releases its starchy milk and the starch begins to caramelize on the bottom of the pan, as shown in the third photo from the left. In culinary French, this (or any other) browned residue is called sucs. Monitor the heat so that the sucs acquire a rich brown color, but don’t let them scorch. When the layer of sucs has formed and browned, remove the corn kernels to a bowl, but allow the sucs to remain in the pan. This is your first step in the Cajun browning method.

Now add the vegetables to the pan and stir, scraping gently to lift the sucs. As the vegetables begin to cook, their natural water content is released and it hydrates the sucs, softening them and creating a “mini-roux” with their remaining starch. Sauté until the vegetables begin to brown, then add the garlic and Cajun seasoning. Complete the softening of the vegetables by adding half the chicken stock and simmering until it both absorbs into the vegetables and evaporates into a poultry glaze. This is your second step in Cajun browning, the beginning of flavor layering, and your first step in the Cajun reduction method.

Return the corn to the pan, and then sprinkle in the flour. Its purpose is to slightly thicken the half-and-half you’ll add later to finish the sauce. (Some Cajun cooks omit the flour and use heavy cream, a product rich enough to thicken solely by reduction—but doing so, in my opinion, results in a maque choux that is overly rich.) Stir in the flour until well combined, and then stir in the remaining stock. Simmer until about 1/4 inch of liquid remains in the bottom of the pan. This is your second reduction step. If you’re serving the maque choux as an accompaniment to grilled chicken, turn off the heat and let it rest until you’re ready to finish it.

To grill-roast the chicken, start with grilling directly over the flame. Squeeze a little oil on the chicken breast halves and place them on the grill grids, skin-side-down. Grill undisturbed until the skin crisps and releases from the grids. Turn the chicken and continue grilling just to brown the flesh side. Depending on the salt content of your Cajun seasoning, you may want to season the chicken with additional salt. At this point the chicken will still be raw in the center. Transfer the chicken to the holding rack above the grill grids, and close the lid. This is the roasting part of the grill-roast method. The chicken will finish cooking by roasting, surrounded by dry heat, within 7 to 10 minutes. (This gives you time to finish the maque choux.) Use an instant-read stem thermometer https://amzn.to/431ZBDN to check the interior temperature at the thickest part of each portion. Remove the chicken from heat when it reaches 160°F; carryover cooking will raise the internal temperature to the required 165°F.

To finish the maque choux, add the scallions and half-and-half, and bring to the simmer. Cook, stirring, until the half-and-half reduces/thickens into a creamy sauce. The scallions add another layer of flavor, whereas the half-and-half enables more reduction. Evaluate the moisture content of your tomatoes and adjust the sauce consistency accordingly: If they’re very juicy, reduce until the sauce is slightly over-thickened.

The last-minute finishing of this dish involves balancing flavors. Stir in the tomatoes and taste. Another layer of flavor. The natural sweetness of the corn combined with sweetness from caramelization typically needs acidity, here in the form of lemon juice. More flavor. Additional acid usually requires salt; add more if necessary. Finally, stir in the herbs and any juices formed around the resting chicken. Yet more flavor. The final consistency of your maque choux sauce should be thick enough to bind the corn kernels together but loose enough to flow on the plate. If it’s too thick, thin it with a little water.

Now you’re ready to plate.

This complex dish needs only simple presentation. Mound the maque choux in warmed bowls and place the chicken breast portions on it. Cut the baguette into slices and overlap them at the back of the chicken. Sprinkle a line of parsley across the maque choux and chicken.