Poached chicken that won't go stringy
Ten minutes, and the water never once boils. That is the entire trick.
At a Glance
Story
Muscle fibre is a bundle of proteins holding water. Heat it past about 180F and those proteins seize and wring the water out, which is why boiled chicken goes dry and stringy while the pot it came out of tastes wonderful. All the flavour left. A bare simmer stays under that line, so the fibres set gently and keep what they are holding. Resting the meat in its own liquid off the heat finishes the job at no temperature at all.
Ingredients
- 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts
- cold waterenough to cover by an inch
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 cloves garlicsmashed (optional, and so is a bay leaf or a few peppercorns)
Method
Every recipe that calls for cooked pulled chicken assumes you bought it that way, in a plastic tub, at a markup, already dry. You can make better in the time it takes to find the tub. The technique below is the one Kitchn taught me, which is really just the discovery that the boil was never doing anything for you.
- Put the breasts in a saucepan that holds them in one layer. Cover with cold water by about an inch, add the salt and the garlic, and start them from cold. Chicken dropped into hot water cooks from the outside in and you get a grey rim before the middle is done.
- Bring it up over medium heat to a bare simmer, the point where a few small bubbles break at the edge of the pan and nowhere else. If the surface starts to roll, pull it off the heat for a moment. This is the whole recipe.
- Hold it there for 8 to 10 minutes. Thick breasts want the long end of that. They are done at 165F at the thickest point. Take the temperature rather than guessing, because the reward for guessing low is salmonella and the reward for guessing high is the stringiness you are here to avoid.
- Take the pan off the heat and leave the chicken in its liquid for 5 minutes. It keeps cooking, gently, and it drinks a little back.
- Shred it, a fork in each hand, pulled apart. If you are making a double batch, a stand mixer with the paddle does it in about fifteen seconds while it is still warm, which is either a brilliant trick or a sign you have too many appliances.
- Keep the poaching liquid. It is a light stock and it cost you nothing, and a splash of it stirred back into the shredded meat keeps it from drying out in the fridge over the next three days.
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