Never dry chicken breast again

Chicken breast remains a popular cut of chicken, but this leanest part of the bird dries out quickly while frying. And nobody enjoys chewing on a dry piece of meat. Want to prevent this? Poach your chicken!

Poaching is simply cooking a product in water that is just below the boil. Chicken cooked in water may not sound like the most appetizing meal; to the untrained ear, it probably sounds mainly like a fit girl recipe with very little fat involved. Although I normally always believe in the motto ‘the fattier, the better,’ I really can’t stop eating poached chicken.

Read also: In defense of chicken breast

The very best part? You can add your own flavorings to the water. Go for a French twist with thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns and a splash of wine, or go Asian with spring onion, garlic and ginger. One of my all-time favorites is Hainanese chicken rice, Singapore’s national dish, in which a whole chicken is poached with exactly those three ingredients. The rice is then cooked in the broth left over after poaching the chicken. Win-win. Free chicken broth to flavor sauces and cook rice and other grains in.

The trick

The trick is to put the chicken in cold water in the pan, heat it, but above all, don’t let the water boil. Chicken dries out because the inside becomes too hot. The ideal internal temperature of chicken is 65 ºC, so if you happen to have a cooking thermometer, try to keep the water at that temperature. After about an hour, you’ll have incredibly tender chicken. You can actually compare it to sous vide cooking, but without the vacuum bag.

No thermometer?

Don’t have a thermometer? Bring the water with the chicken to a boil, then immediately turn off the heat. Leave the chicken in the water; it will be ready after about 30 minutes. Always flatten the chicken beforehand—regardless of how you cook your chicken breast. Otherwise, the thinner part will be bone-dry before the center of the thickest part is cooked through. Poached chicken is delicious over a bowl of rice with vegetables, but also in Caesar salad, in a rich chicken curry with plenty of mayo, as a taco filling or on a sandwich.