Chicken Recipes - Simple, Baked, Fried & More | Taste of Home (2024)

FAQs

How to make chicken more flavorful? ›

Add a touch of spice to your chicken breast by combining paprika, cinnamon, turmeric, cumin, ginger, garlic and olive oil to create a paste. Then cover your chicken breast with the paste and pat down to secure.

If the internal temperature of the chicken breast exceeds the recommended safe temperature (165°F or 74°C), the proteins in the meat can overcook, resulting in a tough texture. Why is my chicken always dry and tough? Cooking it too long so just test for 160 and take out of oven.

If using a dry rub, pat the chicken dry with paper towels before seasoning to ensure the dry rub properly sticks to the meat. Rubbing olive oil or butter onto the dry chicken first can also help seasonings stick.

Yes, you should always season your chicken before cooking when it's raw. You can even do this up to 24 hours before if you have the time. Why? Because leaving the seasoning on your chicken overnight in the fridge will help it start to trap moisture in the chicken, which will make it nice and juicy once cooked.

Am I undercooking or overcooking it? You are not over or under cooking your chicken. The company who sells the chicken that go to market often inject a solution which adds weight to the chicken and when too much solution is injected it causes stringy and rubbery chicken after it is cooked.

chicken breast at 350°F (177˚C) for 25 to 30 minutes. Use a meat thermometer to check that the internal temperature is 165˚F (74˚C).

The secret to succulent fried chicken starts with a marinade or brine, which keeps the chicken at its peak juiciness. Fried chicken traditionalists generally choose a buttermilk marinade while others swear by a brine, which is a mixture of sugar, salt and sometimes spices dissolved into water.

Fried Chicken Will Be Bland Without Enough Salt

Prior to cooking, you should brine the chicken in salted water for up to one hour (you can also use buttermilk, but some chefs swear by water for keeping that breading attached to the chicken at all times).

There are many things that go into the taste of chicken, like whether the chicken can walk around, how old it was when slaughtered, whether it got to eat worms or only chicken feed, the breed of chicken, and so on. But if you've seen a difference in the past two years I'd look at air-chilled vs frozen chicken.

THIGHS. Arguably the tastiest part of the chicken, thighs are little parcels of tender, juicy meat from the top of the bird's leg.

Why is my chicken not tasty? ›

When chicken is overcooked it becomes dry and loses it's fat and juices which delivers it's flavor. My favorite is chicken thighs, skin on on the grill or under the broiler. Salt and fat are a natural combination for flavor.

The key is marinating the chicken in a mixture of garlic, orange juice, lime juice, cumin, oregano, and allspice. The acidity of the orange and lime juice prevents the meat from becoming mushy when cooking.