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- Don't let chicken dry out in the
refrigerator. dry chicken is tough chicken. Keep it wrapped in the package it
comes in until you use it.
- Avoid freezing it. When the juices inside the
cells freeze, they act like little spears and they'll rupture some of the cell
walls. When you defrost the chicken, you'll lose some of the juice and the
chicken be less tender.
- Cook chicken to the proper temperature, using
a meat thermometer or pop-up guide. Cook bone-in chicken to 180F and boneless
chicken to 170F. Undercooked chicken will be tough and rubbery because it
takes a fairly high internal temperature to soften the proteins in the muscles
and make them tender. But don't overcook chicken either, because moisture will
start to steam off, and the more chicken dries out, the tougher it gets.
- Keep the skin on chicken during cooking. The
skin helps keep juices in, and tenderness and juiciness go hand in hand. I've
tried this both ways, and the difference is significant.
- When microwaving any chicken product, cover
it with a loose tent of waxed paper to prevent drying.
- Some authorities feel strongly that you
should not salt the chicken before cooking because salt draws the juices out
during cooking and toughens the meat, In my experience, there is a detectable
difference in tenderness between salting before or after cooking. Still, I
would guess that most people, myself included, wouldn't notice a big
difference unless they were specifically paying attention to it- The
difference doesn't jump out at you as it does with overcooking or freezer
burn.
- Fry or roast breast pieces rather than
microwaving them if tenderness is a top priority for you. Microwaving is
significantly faster, but there's a greater risk of toughness when you
microwave breast meat- Breast meat is fairly dry to begin with, and you don't
have a whole lot of latitude between overcooking and undercooking.
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