Contents
Well, what could be easier – fry, bake or stew a breast or chicken legs for dinner. But there is a catch: we are all wrong when we do this.
We went through the advice of professional chefs and found out what typical mistakes housewives make when cooking chicken. Check out our list – are you doing something similar?
1. My chicken
Meat, poultry and fish cannot be washed at all – this is strictly prohibited. The fact is that you cannot wash off the bacteria that are full on the surface of the bird, but only spread it throughout the kitchen with microdroplets of water. As a result, all surfaces where splashed will be teeming with salmonella. Therefore, leave this fun, it is better to just blot the bird with a paper towel before cooking.
2. Put in an unheated pan
Another terrible sin is to turn on the stove, put the frying pan on, immediately pour oil on it and put the chicken. As a result of this trick, the meat will stick, the fibers will break, and you will not be able to get juicy chicken. Not to mention the fact that the adhering pieces will begin to burn, smoke, ruining the whole mood. First you need to properly heat the pan, and then put meat or poultry on it. And if you are going to fry in oil, then pour it into a preheated pan and wait until it is properly heated.
3. Cooking store chicken broth
Broiler chickens are not good for broth. They are specially bred for frying, roasting and stewing. The meat turns out to be juicy and tasty, and in the broth the broiler bird only crawls away – there is no fat from it. For the broth, it is better to buy homemade chicken, and not young: the meat will be harsh, but the soup will be inexpressibly beautiful.
4. Do not drain the first broth
You cannot wash, but you can drain the broth. It is even necessary: this way you will get rid of all bacteria that you previously tried to wash off, and at the same time from traces of antibiotics and other possible “chemical” impurities in the meat. It is not necessary to cook the chicken for too long: a little the water boils – we immediately drain it, we collect a new one and cook it for a clean copy.
5. Undercooking
Chicken cooks very quickly, but if you are in too much of a hurry, there is a risk of catching salmonella from undercooked or undercooked poultry. Even beef steak with blood is not as dangerous as chicken that has not been sufficiently cooked. So it is better to hold the fillet on the fire for a minute longer than to toil with the stomach later.
6. We buy frozen poultry
Manufacturers say that the chicken is shock-frozen, which means it freezes very quickly. At the same time, the meat fibers do not have time to be damaged and deformed as it happens during slow freezing in an ordinary refrigerator. But in any case, after defrosting, the meat is no longer the same: it loses in juiciness and taste. The problem is that stores often buy frozen poultry, thaw it, and put it on the counter like a “steam room”. But it can be identified by spots on the skin – usually after defrosting, the chicken looks drier than fresh.
7. Defrost the chicken in the microwave
Chefs say that this is one of the most inappropriate ways to defrost anything – even chicken, even meat, even fish. Even if the microwave has a special defrosting mode. The fact is that the microwave oven heats the food unevenly. As a result, it turns out that from one side the bird has not even begun to thaw yet, but from the other it is already slightly cooked. Defrosting a chicken in hot water is also not worth it – so bacteria begin to multiply on its surface at an accelerated rate. It is best to put the bird in a bowl and cover with cold water.
8. Cooking meat straight from the refrigerator
They pulled it out of the shelf – and immediately into a saucepan, onto a baking sheet or into a frying pan. And this is wrong! You can’t even cook sausages like that. Leave the meat on the table for at least half an hour before cooking to warm it up to room temperature. This will make it much juicier.
9. Put the chicken in hot water
Yes, and badly thawed. You can only cook meat or poultry in cold water – they must be warmed up at the same time. Otherwise, due to the temperature difference, the meat will turn out to be tough and tasteless.
10. Freeze the chicken again
An unforgivable mistake. If the bird is already thawed, cook it. As a last resort, just boil it so that the chicken doesn’t go bad, then you’ll figure out what to do with it. But in no case should you freeze it again – after the chicken thaws again, it will taste no better than cardboard.