Chicken is a meat that is popular right across the world, its versatile and can be cooked in many different ways as part of a variety of wonderful tasting recipes. However, one karma that has always bothered novice cooks is the aftermath of eating a piece of chicken that hasn’t been cooked properly, and as we all know this can lead to some nasty bouts of void poisoning. Due to this, many people tend to overcook the chicken so it’s dry and tasteless, in an effort to be safe than sorry.
The main thing you need to get right with chicken is cooking it properly, and we are going to show you a number of ways that you can cook it, and what to look out for.
The first step we need to take in order to get the chicken ready for cooking is to wash it, and this is an important step many of us tend to forget. When handling chicken you should always remember to wash your hands after handling so you don’t cross-contaminate anything, this includes anything else that comes into contact with the chicken such as your knives, chopping board and sink.
Now your chicken is ready to be cooked, so the last point you need to remember is that the chicken should reach a temperature of about 165F which is the optimum cooking temp for chicken.
Everyone’s favourite way of cooking tends to be the sauté option so we will start with this first. To give your chicken a great taste you can create a coating for it. To do this you will need to whisk together some flour and black pepper, then you will need to coat the chicken in it by sprinkling it over your chicken breasts or drumsticks.
Get your pan ready and use either cooking spray or oil to line the bottom of the pan, and then turn up the heat to a medium level. Once the oil has become hot you can place the chicken in the pan, but make sure that you don’t cram the pan so the chicken is overlapping. If you have too much chicken then just repeat the process twice otherwise you will be left with uncooked parts.
Usually a good 7 minutes of cooking on either side of the chicken breast is sufficient to get the heat throughout the entire chicken breast. Once both sides of the chicken are golden brown you can remove them from the pan and set them aside for roughly 10-15 minutes before serving them up.
Creating the marinade is probably the most exciting part to this method, because nobody really eats chicken as it comes. Firstly, get yourself some sealable bags, or zipped bags that you can place your chicken into. Then using a mixing bowl you can prepare your marinade, whether you want a spicy one, a barbeque tasting one of something different you can mix it all together in the bowl and then pour it into the bag.
Be sure to give the bag a shake, or turn it around so that the marinade completely covers all the chicken inside.
Now you can either choose to grill or oven cook your chicken. If you want to oven cook it then you can place the bag on a baking tray and cook it for around 30 – 40 minutes, then leave the chicken to rest for a further 15 before you unzip the bag and serve up the delicious dish.
If you are going for the grilling options then empty the chicken from the bag and place it on a preheated grill, you will need to rotate the chicken every so often so that both sides are cooked to an equal standard. To get the chicken crispy you need to place it along the grill marks, for a juicy finish place it diagonal against the grill marks (this method gives you those fantastic grill lines that runs across the chicken breast).
Remember that with any way of cooking chicken to always look for that 165F temperature, so if you don’t have a cooking thermometer then we suggest you buy one as they are very cheap online or down your local store.
Once the chicken is cooked take it off the grill and set it aside on the counter top for a further 10 minutes before you serve it up. The marinaded chicken will taste great for your guests and by adding a few corn on the cobs you have a bright and vibrant dish that wouldn’t look out of place in Gordon Ramsey’s kitchen.
Just be sure your chicken is cooked, and your dinner guests should have a great time.