Success: The best way to cook chicken breasts

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

It turns out that when you remove grains and dairy from your at-home cooking habit, and you don't cook much meat (if at all), you're left with very few choices. Hence this investigation into the preparation of pastured chicken. Luckily, I stumbled on a pretty much perfect method with my first attempt:

1. Brine chicken for 15-30 minutes (30 minutes is best): 3 Tbsp salt dissolved in 3 cups warm water. Pour over meat in a shallow dish, like a pie plate. Add herbs & spices. Let sit 30 minutes. Pat brine off of meat.
2. Follow TheKitchn's method for perfect chicken breasts. Flatten breasts. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil on medium high. Reduce heat to medium and cook chicken breasts without moving them for 1 minute. Flip chicken breasts. Reduce heat to low. Cover pan and cook for 10 minutes. Turn off heat and let sit for 10 minutes. NO PEEKING.
3. Om nom nom nom

Note: Instead of brining, as in Step 1, you can also just rub the chicken breasts with a spice of your choice. Curry. Herbs de Provence. Garam Masala. Whatever. Or make your "brine" from the juice & zest of one lemon and a couple tablespoons of olive oil, for lemon chicken.

I used about a pound of thin cut pastured/organic/etc boneless skinless chicken breasts from Trader Joe's. I did four pieces with the brining method and three with three different spices. Now I've got tender chicken breasts to stick in my lunch all week long!