Chicken

This might be the best, easiest, and smartest way to cook a chicken.

“Have you ever cooked a chicken like this before?” the chef asked me when he gave me my assignment. 

“No,” I replied. 

“Well, you’ll never cook it another way again,” he promised. 

And he was right. 

Quick backstory… I volunteered to help out in the kitchen during one of the school’s recreational classes a few weeks ago, and found it eye opening. In this scenario (called a “stage”) I was no longer teaming up with someone to practice a new skill and then eating the results ourselves. This time I was cooking for other people. Paying customers. With a chef telling me what to do and who would be judging how I did it. 

In other words, the bar was raised dramatically. 

The most important job of the night was to fire off 12 chicken breasts (for both the customers and the staff) to be served with the sauces the class was learning how to make. Now chicken breasts can be finicky things. They’re quite lean, so the line between undercooked and dry is very thin. 

What’s more, I’m cooking these dozen chickens all at once. No cooking off one first just to test. It’s 12 at once… all in. Pass / Fail. 

Needless to say I was nervous. I’d like to continue helping out in the school kitchen after the program ends, so I wanted to make a good impression. I already took twice as long as was needed to finish my prep assignment that night (ok, maybe three times longer than it should have ), so I felt I needed to redeem myself. 

Fortunately, the chef had a very specific process he wanted followed. Here’s how it goes…

Prepare your chicken breast… bone-in, skin on airline chicken breasts. These should be from chicken breasts you carved off a whole chicken, not those crap chicken parts they sell in the store with the ribcage still attached. Season with salt and pepper. 

Preheat an oven to 500. That’s right… full whack. Then bring a cast iron pan to high heat on the stovetop. Cast irons can take a minute, so give yourself time. Add just enough sunflower oil to coat the bottom of the pan… don’t let it pool up. 

Just when the pan’s ready to start smoking, add the chicken breasts, skin side down, and press down hard to seal the skin flat against the hot surface of the pan. You’ll feel it bubbling underneath, and that’s what you want. You’re literally pressing the air bubbles out from under the chicken. 

Then let it cook on the stovetop until you see the edges of the skin against the pan starting to brown. Go ahead and give it a look… it should be a golden brown, but not black or burned, and the flesh just above the skin on the side should start turning white, while the top flesh remains pink and raw. 

Don’t turn the chicken over. Instead, transfer the cast iron skillet into the 500 degree stove, keeping the chicken skin side down. Keep it there for about 15 minutes, starting to check the internal temperature at around 10-12 minutes. 

When the internal temp reaches around 155-160, remove the breasts and let them rest, skin side up, on a rack (you want airflow underneath). Let rest for about 10-15 minutes, then slice and serve (or serve whole). 

That’s it. It’s easy and nearly foolproof. 

Here’s the rationale behind this method… it’s common (and certainly not “wrong”) to flip chicken breasts after first searing the skin side down to briefly brown the bottom and then finish it off in a low oven on a rack (see the post Heat for an example). Some recipes even call for flipping the chicken and adding the whole pan to the oven, skin side up. 

But… when chicken is cooking, it’s expelling moisture. And at hot temperature, that means expelling steam. Steam rises from the bottom up. Letting a skin-on chicken cook in an oven (or stovetop) with the skin up means steam from the uncooked bottom of the chicken is rising to the top and making the skin soggy. Or at least not as crisp. 

There are ways to solve for this. For instance, you can flip the chicken in the pan, skin side up, and then baste the skin with hot butter in the pan (a technique known as “arroser” which just means “baste” in French). That’s all well and good when you’re cooking one chicken breast. But when you’re cooking 12… you can see the complication. 

So by leaving the chicken in the pan in a blazing hot oven skin side down, the skin remains crispy against the hot pan, and the steam rises to cook the tender flesh up top. The result is a crisp skin and moist meat that’s a joy to eat. 

The risk of course is burning the skin. So you have to get it into the oven at the right time. Too long on the stove before transferring it to the oven increases that risk. So pay attention and check your chicken as the edges start to brown. 

And use your thermometer to check doneness when in the oven. 155 - 160 is when you take it out. As it sits/rests, it will increase in temp through carryover cooking to the recommended internal temp of 165. 

To properly take the temp of an airline chicken breast, insert your thermometer needle into the thick side of the breast opposite the drumette. Also, if you’re using a digital thermometer, make sure it’s not accidentally on celsius. (This happened to me in a later class, and I nearly ruined my duck). 

Sorry no pictures. I’ll update with photos next time I make this.