Cooking Perfectly Tender Chicken

4 6-ounce skinless chicken breasts (If they’re on the bone, they’ll be tastier, and take a little longer to cook)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

3 scallions, cut into 2-inch pieces

2 quarter-inch slices of ginger

1 pint chicken stock, or as needed to cover

1

Season

Season the chicken with a generous sprinkling of salt on both sides, and let it rest for at least 20 minutes, preferably 45. You want the salt to penetrate the meat so that it doesn’t wash off when it’s plunked into the stock. That’s not the worst fate in the universe, but you’d rather the chicken hang onto the seasoning than the broth.

2

Add aromatics

Preheat your oven to 275⁰F. In a sauté pan or Dutch oven big enough to hold all your chicken in one layer, heat the oil over medium heat until it just shimmers. Add the scallions, spread them around, and let them sear to a golden brown. Note that this one of the great smells in all of cooking, or think of counter arguments. Add the ginger slices, and then a cup of stock, which will probably be pretty boil-y.

3

Add chicken

Adjust the heat to medium low so that the stock is just barely bubbling and add the chicken, making sure there’s room in between pieces so that liquid surrounds all sides of the meat. Add more stock as needed to cover the chicken by a quarter inch or so.

4

Poaching temperature

Keep the pan over the flame until the stock is steaming, and just threatening to bubble. This is poaching temperature, around 170⁰F or so, and the nice thing about it is that it won’t really overcook your bird unless you really forget about it.

5

Cook in oven

Carefully – don’t splash yourself! – put the whole pan in the oven. The gentle, even heat will keep the liquid at the right temperature, and you won’t have to worry about direct flame under the pan secretly overcooking one side of your chicken while the top looks fine. Maybe you didn’t worry about that before. Well, be worried, because THE WORLD IS AN UGLY PLACE.

6

Check, and done

After 5 minutes, make sure the stock isn’t bubbling; if it is, turn down the heat. After another 5 minutes, check on the chicken; it’s done if a thermometer in the thickest part reaches 160⁰F, assuming it’ll raise another 5⁰ after you take it out of the stock… oh what am I talking about? You know if chicken is raw or cooked. If it needs more time, just pop the pan back in the oven. Make sure it’s cooked. Done.

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Francis LamFrancis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. In past lives, he was a Senior Writer at Salon.com, a Contributing Editor at Gourmet magazine (RIP), and his work has appeared in the 2006 - 2011 editions of Best Food Writing. He believes that, in professional football, that would count as a dynasty; in ancient China, not so much.