

Cooking Chicken: Basics, Tips and Recipes

How To Cook Chicken

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Chicken is an easy, economical and incredibly versatile mainstay of any diet, especially since there are so many styles and methods of cooking chicken. It’s the perfect palette for a variety of flavors. There are endless options for cooking chicken, whether you’re preparing meals for just yourself or for a crowd. You can also feel good about using chicken often as a staple in your kitchen, because nutritionally, it can’t be beat. Let’s take a look at the basics, including nutrition information, safe handling and cooking methods. We’ll also detail some delicious and versatile chicken recipes that you’re sure to love!

Chicken is a worldwide food favorite, and for good reason. Aside from its mild, satisfying flavor and texture, and the fact that it can be adapted to any style of cuisine, it’s a nutritional powerhouse of protein. Chicken is low in calories and total fat content, and incredibly low in dangerous saturated fat. A skin-on chicken breast has only 170 calories, seven grams of fat and two grams of saturated fat. Removing the skin shaves off 50 calories and leaves the fat count at a mere one and a half grams, with saturated fat going down to a tiny half a gram. With or without skin, for the calories in chicken breasts you get a whopping 24 to 25 grams of heart-healthy, muscle-building protein per breast. For those who prefer dark chicken, skinless drumsticks contain about 130 calories and four grams of fat. Leaving the skin on will add about 50 calories and five grams of total fat per drumstick. Keep in mind that these counts are just for the chicken itself; other ingredients you use when cooking chicken will increase the nutritional counts accordingly.

Safe Handling
The first thing to take into consideration before cooking chicken is proper handling and refrigeration. Although chicken is easy to cook with and readily available in many forms, it requires a bit of safety know-how and common sense. Before you handle any food, especially poultry, it's imperative to wash your hands thoroughly. Use hot water and soap, lathering up to the elbow and taking care to clean your fingernails well. Remove jewelry and wash for at least 20 seconds to kill bacteria and remove debris.

Wash your hands again if you touch any garbage, another person, a pet, your face or your hair. If you've handled poultry, wash your hands before you handle other types of food, such as vegetables, fruit, fish and meats. It's also smart to clean the faucet knobs with an antibacterial wipe between hand-washings. When in doubt, wash your hands again. Food-borne bacteria like salmonella and E. coli can cause miserable and sometimes life-threatening illnesses, so it's always best to err on the side of caution.

Handling raw chicken requires attention to detail. At the grocery store, make sure the cashier double bags all raw meats and fish separately from other foods, and when you get home, rewrap chicken and other raw meats securely and store them in the freezer or on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator so that juices from the chicken won't accidentally drip onto other foods and contaminate them.
Keep a separate cutting board for poultry, disinfect it between uses, and never put cooked chicken on a surface where raw chicken has been. The juices from the raw chicken harbor bacteria, and if the cooked chicken comes into contact with these juices, it can be as dangerous as eating raw chicken. After defrosting or rinsing chicken in the sink, clean the sink basin thoroughly. If you have a cut anywhere on your hand, clean it, cover it with a bandage and use gloves while cooking.

A Word About Thawing
If you're working with frozen chicken, there are several ways to thaw it out so you can use it in recipes. Even though it takes longer than other methods, the safest way to thaw chicken is in the refrigerator, because it keeps the chicken cold enough to discourage bacterial growth. Thawing in cold water is also an option, provided the chicken is inside a tightly sealed plastic bag and submerged completely in cold water that you change out every 20 to 30 minutes. Thawing chicken in the microwave is not advised, as it causes uneven thawing and can dry out the meat. Under no circumstances should you thaw frozen chicken under hot water or by simply leaving it out at room temperature. Serious food poisoning can result from handling chicken this way.

How to Cook a Chicken
If you want to bake chicken, you can bake the whole bird or cut it into pieces (or have the butcher cut it up for you).
Leaving the skin on while cooking chicken is preferable, as it keeps the meat moist. You can remove the skin later if you're watching calories and fat. Start with a two- to four-pound broiler-fryer chicken, salt and pepper, your favorite dried herbs (one or a combination) and some olive oil. No measuring necessary ' this one is meant to be easy! Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

If your chicken is whole, take the giblets out of the body cavity, rinse the whole chicken under cold water, dry it off with paper towels and season it liberally outside and inside the cavity with salt and pepper. If you're chicken is cut into pieces, simply rinse, dry and season. Place the chicken in a roasting pan, breast side up for a whole chicken and skin sides up for pieces. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle generously with the dried herbs. Rub gently with your fingertips to start working the olive oil and herbs into the meat. You can also substitute a bottled marinade for the olive oil and herbs if you like.

Depending on the total weight, bake the chicken for one to two hours. While you're cooking chicken in the oven, check it often ' once the skin looks golden brown, start testing the chicken with a meat thermometer. Insert the thermometer in the deepest part of the flesh. For the breast, the internal temperature should be 170 degrees.
Thighs must reach 180 degrees. Make a small cut in the meat to ensure that it's not pink and that the juices are clear. Remove the pan from the oven and allow 10 minutes for cooling and resting. This also gives the juices a chance to redistribute ' if you carve it too soon, most of the juices will run out and you'll be left with dry chicken.

Boneless Chicken Breasts
Cooking with boneless chicken breasts is one of the easiest and most healthful ways to use chicken. Using the seasoning techniques described above, you can bake a pan of 6 to 8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts at 375 degrees Fahrenheit in just 20 to 30 minutes. If you prefer dark meat, use thighs and increase the cooking time by 10 to 15 minutes. Many cooks prepare a pan or two of chicken pieces early in the week, then bag and refrigerate each one separately to use for different dinners. For example, you may shred a couple of baked chicken breasts to make quick quesadillas on Tuesday, while on Thursday you could slice another few chicken breasts to use in a Thai chicken salad.
The beauty of this method is that the cooking is already done ' all you have to do for dinner (especially when you're exhausted after a long day at the office) is assemble the ingredients.

Moving Along
Now that you know the basics about handling and cooking chicken, feel free to experiment with different flavors. Garlic and lemon are wonderful together, as are rosemary and oregano. Look through a chicken cook book for new recipes, or just for ideas to use as jumping-off places for culinary experiments. Chicken is the perfect blank slate for any type of cuisine, so you'll never get bored. And since it's so nutritionally sound, you'll never have to feel guilty or unhealthy. So get cooking!

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