How to cook the most delicious chicken. What to cook with chicken
Chicken is the most popular food in a bodybuilder's diet. However, this does not mean that you have to choke on dry chicken breast every day! We will share 7 secrets of preparing mouth-watering, tasty and delicious chicken meat.
If you're a fitness fanatic, chicken is likely a regular feature on your dinner table, and for a lot of reasons. It is an inexpensive, versatile, low-fat food that is quick to prepare, rich in protein, and goes well with other dishes.
What more could you ask for? The only problem is that if you eat chicken every day, you might get tired of it. Barbecue seasoning adds some variety, but only to a certain extent. Therefore, we decided to collect 7 tips on how to cook chicken and make this staple of your diet much tastier.
1. Marinate the chicken
For rich flavor, season, marinate the chicken and refrigerate for 24 hours before cooking. The longer the chicken is in the marinade, the more delicious aromas it infuses.
To keep your meals as healthy as possible, marinate the chicken in fruit juice or chicken broth, rather than in oil-based marinades.
Always refrigerate the chicken while marinating, even if you plan to marinate it for no more than 30 minutes.
2. Use colorful seasonings
Use brightly colored seasonings, such as grated lemon zest, crushed hot peppers, fresh herbs and vinegar to add flavor to chicken without adding fat.
Use fresh minced garlic, thyme, oregano and basil in Italian recipes. To prepare Indian-style chicken, combine coriander, turmeric, cardamom and bay leaves in the marinade.
For Thai chicken, try adding cilantro, lime juice, ginger, coconut milk and lemongrass. For authentic Mexican flavors, experiment with cumin and sage, finely chop chiles, or add chili powder.
Avoid buying ready-made spice mixtures and marinades, as they often contain flavor enhancers, artificial flavors and other undesirable ingredients.
3. Choose the right cookware
Chicken fried in oil is very appetizing, but a passion for vegetable or butter leads to obesity. We suggest giving up vegetable and animal fats by using non-stick cookware.
4. Bake no longer than necessary.
By keeping chicken in the oven, you can dramatically deteriorate its taste. To solve this problem, use a food thermometer, which will tell you the optimal cooking mode. The internal meat temperature of a whole chicken should reach 80°C, and chicken breasts should be cooked to 75°C.
The second way to determine the degree of readiness is to pierce the thickest part of the meat and evaluate the clarity of the escaping juice. If the juices are clear and colorless (not pink), the chicken is ready.
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As a rule, chicken is baked at an oven temperature of 170-190° for 15 minutes + 20 minutes for every 500 g of meat
5. Leave the skin
If you are cooking a whole chicken, it is better to leave the skin on - the meat will be juicier. The skin holds the juices and flavors in the meat and comes off easily once cooked.
You can also try rubbing spices under the skin of the chicken. This way, when baking, the spices will not burn, and the meat will be more flavorful.
6. Use brine
One of the best ways To prepare very juicy, tender and aromatic chicken, soaking it in salt water or brine is considered. To make a good brine, dissolve half a glass of salt and half a glass of cane sugar in 4-4.5 liters of water.
Submerge the chicken completely in the solution and immediately place it in the refrigerator. You can press the meat down with something so that it is completely immersed in the brine. Allow the meat to soak in the liquid for 3-12 hours.
This process makes the chicken more juicy, infuses the meat with flavor and reduces cooking time. It is important to understand that chicken meat cooks faster after soaking in brine than without pre-soaking, because water is a better conductor of heat than meat.
Brining makes chicken meat juicier by filling the muscle cells with fluid, a process called osmosis. The brine surrounding the cells has a higher salt concentration than the fluid inside the cells, but the intracellular fluid contains more other dissolved components.
This imbalance promotes the penetration of salt ions into the cell by diffusion. An increase in the salt content of the cell fluid causes the cells to absorb water from the brine by osmosis. Salt entering the cells also causes protein denaturation. Protein molecules coagulate (fold), forming complexes that absorb water and retain it during the cooking process. All this protects the meat from drying out or dehydration.
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Before cooking, be sure to remove excess brine by rinsing the chicken in clean water and dry the meat with paper towels.
7. Rub with salt and sugar
Another way to cook tasty and tender chicken is to rub it with salt and sugar. For the chicken breast, combine 1/3 cup coarse salt and 1/3 cup cane sugar with your favorite seasonings. The ideal accord would be a tablespoon of ground black pepper and the same amount of paprika or red pepper.
Place the chicken in a large, sealable plastic bag, rub it evenly with the spice mixture, salt and sugar, then seal the bag tightly and refrigerate for 4 to 8 hours. You may find it easier to use multiple packages.
Before cooking, rinse chicken breasts thoroughly, remove salt and sugar, and pat dry with paper towels. The meat is ready to cook.
Conclusion
Chicken is an excellent source of protein for any athlete. Having mastered new recipes for preparing this fundamental product, you will diversify your diet and learn how to prepare dishes that you will want to return to again and again.
Don't be afraid to experiment with different flavors. Chicken goes well with so many foods and flavors, you just have to use your imagination and inhale new life in chicken dishes. Bon appetit!
Chicken meat has always been popular. Firstly, chicken is affordable and can replace pork, lamb and partly beef. And secondly, white meat is considered dietary product, a source of protein, contains less fat. Let's see what can be cooked quickly from chicken in the frantic rhythm of our lives.
What can you cook from chicken?
There are a huge number of amazing chicken recipes, we will tell you about some of them that have passed our test and are prepared without much difficulty.
What can you cook from a whole chicken?
Let's share a recipe for oven-baked chicken. The recipe is very easy, and the taste and aroma of the dish are excellent!
We will need:
- whole chicken (you choose the weight yourself),
- garlic,
- salt, spices.
What can you cook from chicken, taking it whole? Usually, chicken is sold in stores already gutted. All we have to do is wash it and cut the breast lengthwise with a sharp knife. That is, we place the chicken on its back and make a cut from the neck to the bottom. Now turn on the oven so that it starts to warm up. And at this time we only lightly grease the baking sheet vegetable oil(some people don’t do this at all, since the chicken releases a lot of its juice) and sprinkle it with salt. Place the chicken on the baking sheet, cut breast side down, pressing the chicken down so that it is flattened. Rub the top of the chicken right here with salt and spices, if you have them. Cut the garlic into large slices, make small cuts across the entire surface of the chicken and place the garlic in them. The garlic will penetrate the chicken very easily. Place in the oven on a medium level (t=200°). The chicken will cook in about 40 minutes. Throughout this time, every 7-10 minutes, water the surface of the chicken with its own juice. The aroma throughout the apartment will be amazing, and the chicken itself will be juicy and rosy.
What to cook from chicken fillet
We will need:
- chicken fillet, lightly frozen,
- 2 eggs,
- breadcrumbs or flour.
To prepare a chicken fillet dish, the chicken fillet must be slightly frozen. This way we can cut it lengthwise into 2-3 parts (depending on the thickness of the piece). It is enough to beat off the resulting fillet parts quite a bit, they will become even larger in size. Salt and pepper the chicken. Now break 2 eggs into one plate and start beating them with a fork, and pour breadcrumbs or flour into another. Now the most important thing: roll each piece of chicken in egg and flour. Place in a frying pan greased with vegetable oil. Fry for 5 minutes on one side and the same on the other. Surely, you will end up with more than one frying pan, and the chicken will swell from the egg and flour (crumbs). It can be cut in half again before serving. Tip: the dish tastes better with breadcrumbs.
What else delicious can you make from chicken?
This time you can choose the part of the chicken from which you will cook. The main thing is to cut it into small pieces.
We will need:
- chicken (500 gr),
- potatoes (1 kg),
- mayonnaise,
- salt, spices, herbs
Cut the chicken into small pieces and cut the potatoes into thin slices. Marinate pieces of chicken and potatoes in mayonnaise and spices, leave for a couple of hours. Then place the chicken on a baking sheet, and potatoes on top of it. Place in a preheated oven. Bake at t=180°. Check from time to time to see if the potatoes have become soft. Then pour vegetable oil over the potatoes and squeeze the garlic onto them. Simmer for another 10 minutes. And at the end, if you wish, you can sprinkle the potatoes with herbs and cheese, turn the oven on to maximum to form a golden crust. Bon appetit!
Chicken in potatoes
This dish is prepared quite simply and quickly. Chicken in potatoes is a kind of zrazy with meat, only more tasty and healthy.
To prepare this dish you need chicken breast, potatoes, cheese, flour, egg, herbs, salt and pepper.
Initially, you should thinly chop the greens and mix them with grated cheese. Next, the chicken breast is cut into small thin slices, which should be fried in a frying pan for 5 minutes. During frying, the meat should be salted and pepper to taste.
While the chicken breast is frying, you need to peel the potatoes and grate them. Grated potatoes are mixed with flour, egg and salt.
Grated potatoes are evenly distributed in a heated frying pan. To avoid burning, more sunflower oil should be added. Ideally, the oil should completely cover the potatoes.
When the potatoes are completely cooked on one side, turn them over. Meat is placed on one half of the potato pancake, which must be sprinkled with grated cheese and herbs.
After about 3 minutes, when the potato pancake is completely fried, cover the meat with its free part and lightly press it down with a spatula.
Chicken in tomato
The preparation of this tasty and aromatic dish begins with the sauce, which requires the following products:
tomatoes;
garlic;
pepper;
coriander.
Tomatoes must be peeled and scalded with boiling water. After this, they should either be grated or chopped in a blender. Into the resulting tomato paste add grated garlic, ground pepper, coriander seeds and herbs.
After preparing the sauce, you need to cut raw chicken into small pieces. Instead of a whole chicken, you can use legs or wings. The cut chicken is tightly placed in baking pots and poured with sauce.
The pots, tightly covered, are placed in the oven for approximately 40 minutes. To prepare this dish, instead of pots, you can use ordinary glass jars covered with saucers.
Chicken legs in sour cream
Despite the fact that chicken legs baked in sour cream are very simple to prepare, this dish can decorate any celebration.
To begin, you need to chop the onion into half rings and place it on a baking sheet in a tight row. Next, the chicken legs are cut into two parts and placed on top of the onion. The legs must also be laid in a dense, even carpet, otherwise they will lose their juiciness during the cooking process.
After this, half a liter of sour cream should be diluted with water and garlic, salt and pepper should be added to it. The finished sauce is spread on the chicken. Then, the chicken is baked in the oven for 30-40 minutes. If desired, a few minutes before the dish is ready, you can sprinkle it with grated cheese and fresh herbs.
Czech chicken
In the Czech Republic, it is customary to add carrots and onions to any meat dishes. In ancient times, the Czechs believed that by consuming meat, onions and carrots, a person received all the necessary microelements, so he would not face any diseases.
To prepare chicken according to the Czech recipe, you need to cut the meat into small pieces and sprinkle it generously with spices. While the meat is soaked in spices, the carrots are grated and the onions are chopped into half rings.
Next, onions and carrots are fried in a frying pan with a small addition of sunflower oil. When the carrots are completely fried and the onions acquire a golden color, the vegetables are added to the pan with the chicken meat. The vegetables should completely cover the chicken.
To make the finished dish juicy and appetizing, add half a glass of water to the pan with food. After this, tightly closing the pan with a lid, put the meat in the oven for 10 minutes.
After baking, the chicken pieces are fried in a frying pan and then mixed with vegetables again. While the chicken is baking in the oven, a thick broth will appear in the pan, which Czech chefs use to prepare soup.
Chicken with sweet sauce
Chicken with sweet sauce is most often prepared in China. Thanks to the combination of ingredients such as honey, garlic and onions, chicken meat acquires an unusual piquant taste.
To prepare this recipe you need the following ingredients:
chicken fillet;
Bell pepper;
garlic;
carrots.
This recipe also includes making a sauce, which is prepared from the following products:
soy sauce;
vinegar;
starch.
First of all, chicken meat should be separated from the bone and then cut into thin strips. After this, the meat is poured with soy sauce for about 10 minutes. After the meat has absorbed the sauce, it must be fried over low heat.
At this time, cut the carrots into strips and add them to the meat. When the chicken and carrots are almost cooked through, add starch diluted in half a glass. cold water.
Next, finely chopped garlic, honey and vinegar are added to the products. After this, chopped onion into half rings and diced pepper are added to the ingredients.
During frying, foods must be stirred vigorously. A few minutes before it is ready, reduce the heat and let the dish simmer a little. In total, the entire cooking process takes about 40 minutes.
If the finished dish turns out too sweet, you can add a little vinegar to the sauce. Chicken with sweet sauce is served hot. It is best to use rice as a side dish.
Baked chicken
Fragrant baked chicken can make anyone festive table truly chic. To make the dish especially tasty and juicy, experienced chefs recommend keeping the chicken in water with 3 tablespoons of salt before cooking.
After about an hour, remove the chicken and dry it with a paper towel.
After this, you need to take a half-liter bottle of beer and remove the labels from it. About half of the liquid is poured out of the bottle, and then a small amount of dry spices is added.
The chicken is completely placed on the bottle and placed on a baking sheet. The dish should be baked for an hour. The chicken will bake best at 220 degrees, but if the top starts to brown quickly, the bird will need to be covered with foil.
The finished chicken is cut into pieces and served with any side dish.