We need to have a serious conversation about this. I only want to help you. I also get a lot of emails from Feel the Burn-ers asking me how to cook meat, because I eat a ton of meat, and seem like someone who knows how to cook it (you are correct).
First up, if you are a vegan or a vegetarian, you already do not buy boneless skinless chicken breasts, so this does not apply to you and I salute your commitment to living in accordance with your ethical beliefs.
Second, you may want to chime in here about how people should buy chicken THIGHS instead, which is probably correct, but we’re trying to encourage small changes, so let’s table that conversation.
Guys, boneless skinless chicken breasts are the worst, and I’m going to devote a lot of time and energy to explaining why. Let us begin.
I. They Cost More Than the Kind Which Come With Skin and Bones
For a certain percentage of you, this polemic might as well start and end here. Big Chicken charges you for the privilege of removing the skin and bones from your chicken, even when you calculate the small bump in poundage represented by the weight of the bones. This is nonsense! Why is this nonsense?
II. Chicken Skin Is Delicious
I will not pretend that raw chicken skin holds any appeal. It looks disgusting, and it reminds you that chickens have skin, which may also remind you that chickens have a variety of other things, like the ability to experience pain and fear. Not to get all cheesy on you here, but if I were a chicken, I would prefer that you eat my skin rather than have it extracted from my corpse in a factory and tossed out or made into a slurry to be fed to my compatriots.
But I have come to praise chicken skin, and not to bury it. Correctly prepared (i.e. pan-seared or roasted), that same gross skin becomes a crackling marvel of fat and umami perfection. When I roast a chicken, or pay the exceptionally reasonable price to acquire a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket, I immediately gobble the crispy skin parts first, and then grudgingly turn to the meat. Which is still delicious.
III. Cooking Them With the Skin On Helps With Moisture and Flavor
We can talk about brining and all that jazz until the cows come home (go ahead, knock yourself out), but the easiest way to keep your chicken from being a dry, boring disaster is to allow nature’s own protective surface to keep the meat tender and juicy. The fat migrates into the meat, filling it with delicious goodness.
IV. The Skin Creates a Little Pocket You Can Shove Cheese and Butter and Herbs and Pine Nuts Into
TRUE STORY. We’ll get more into this part tomorrow, when I provide you with a perfect recipe for real chicken breasts, but the [Ni]Cole’s Notes version is to take them out of the fridge for about 20 minutes to take the chill off, then tug the skin away from the meat so you’ve got a little cave, and then stuff things into it. You can always slice chicken in half to stuff it, but that’s a pain and it winds up being way thicker on one end, and this is exactly enough space for a glob of softened butter, some grated cheese of your choosing, some leftover sauteed spinach from last night, and maybe a scoop of the aforementioned pine nuts, which are easier to afford now that you’re saving money on your chicken breasts. Each bite of the chicken will change your life.
V. You Can Throw Out the Skin After You Cook the Breasts if You Want To
I’m not your mom. If you don’t like the skin, cook it with the skin on anyway, so the meat attains the juiciness and flavor mentioned above, then wait until the breasts cool and yank it off and throw it in the trash or feed it to your dog. Don’t give me any shit about feeding dogs chicken skin, ours lived to be sixteen (which is bananas for a sixty pound dog) and ate chicken skin on the daily. Look how shiny his coat was, and he was twelve in this picture. Your dog may have digestive issues that forbid this, make your own choices and consult your vet. Also, the skin is way easier to remove after it’s been cooked.
RIP, Denali. You were so loved, and I have no legitimate answer as to why I would have cheerfully killed a human I’ve never met to give you eternal life, yet eat many chickens a year.
VI. Wait Until Tomorrow and I Will Explain Exactly What To Do With Your Real Chicken Breasts
Stay tuned for more. You shan’t regret it.
Tags: chicken, chicken breasts, feel the burn, food, important things, recipes
PREACH. Just shove a lemon and some thyme up a chicken’s butt and let it think about stuff in the oven for an hour and then everything will taste better.
Plus the boneless skinless breasts look kind of like big slugs, so.
I roast a whole chicken on occasion and my housemate is super impressed with my cooking skills because I do it, but really, it’s the easiest damn thing in the world and also there’s so much delicious chicken skin to eat when you do.
Fat =flavor. Amen, sister!
Two things:
-I spent yesterday night trying to braise chicken thighs and while that was only moderately successfully, I was really good at searing/frying the delicious delicious skin (and the non-skin covered underside.) My husband and I ended up eating those separately as I was caramelizing other veggies for the braise. Note: skin tastes 10x better if they’ve got a bit of salt or seasoning on them.
-If (and only IF) they are on super-awesome sale, I’ll buy boneless, skinless chicken and cut them up into tiny pieces for chicken nuggets or jambalaya. Part of me feels like they make for more robust chicken nuggets, but then again I’m a weirdo who breads them with almond meal or mashed up plantain chips in an attempt to be adhere to paleo/primal diet rules, so what do I know?
I actually AM a vegetarian and I am here to endorse this post, especially the “skin is a pocket for herbs” part. If you’re going to eat meat, make it good y’all.
TRUTH.
I haven’t bought chicken parts in years, actually. Whole chickens only. We roast them into crispy perfection and pick off the piping hot skin to eat, cackling like witches. We keep the bones in our freezer to make soup.
The only animals worth buying in parts are the four-legged ones too big to fit into your freezer whole.
Sometimes I think it’d be nice to have a permanent romantic partner but then I’d probably have to share that roasted chicken skin so…being single’s pretty great sometimes!
Oh, my romantic partner is a vegetarian. I do this with a longtime ladyfriend who is also my neighbor, cooking buddy, and coven mate. : D
“gobble the crispy parts” I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE
I had this whole aside about how Steve takes the carcass apart shirtless and feeds me morsels by hand, but it got kind of gross and lovahhhh-SNL-skit like so I killed it.
agreed. UNLESS you want to make stir fry. or some sort of curry. in which case cooking without skins is actually better (no one likes picking out soggy chicken skins out of their curry). and one should use breasts for stir fry. i firmly believe this. or any other piece of chicken. or tofu. or you know, just don’t bother and have a drink.
Yeah, boneless/skinless is my go-to for anything involving cubed-up chicken because the bones/skin would be wasted anyway. (I’m sure someone will tell me how they could be used for maximum flavor/efficiency, but eh.) Bone-in skin-on thighs are the bomb for roasting, though, coming from someone whose oven has been broken since we moved in so all our oven-type cooking is done in a pretty small toaster oven.
ahhh so hungry
just googled “chicken good”
going to bring something more substantive for lunch tomorrow so I can read the second part
My favorite favorite favorite thing to make is to roast chicken thighs with just a little salt and pepper. Then, I like to eat the skin as a treat while I wait for the chicken to cool down enough so I can take the meat off the bones and shred it for later use. This way I get a)tasty, delicious shredded chicken and b)salty chicken skin.
My other favorite thing to do is to take a whole chicken, stuff a bunch of lemon slices up its butt, then rub butter blended with a little lemon juice and salt between the skin and the meat and roast. If I’m feeling fancy I had herbs but mostly I just use lemons. Lemons do everything.
I love roasting chicken thighs but I’ve only done the boneless/skinless route. It usually takes about 30-45 minutes at 425 for one pan in my oven. Can you basically do the same thing for thighs with bone and skin, just with a longer period, or do you have to take more precautions than just drizzling with oil?
My mom used to make roast chicken pieces all the time when I was growing up, and they were/are my favorite thing so I asked her how she made them when I left home. Turns out it’s just salt, pepper, garlic powder, chicken, and oven. No wonder she laughed when I said that was what I wanted her to teach me…
I do pretty much the same thing only I also shove a couple chopped heads of garlic up the butt and a few bay leaves under the skin with the butters. I can make it in my sleep. Go-to for garnering love and misplaced affection from everyone but the g-d vegetarian boyfriend.
this made me google image search “chicken good”
well done
I am a vegetarian for a wide variety of reasons (the biggest one being that I don’t like the taste of meat) so I am maybe not an expert, but I have always thought boneless chicken breasts look like the single grossest kind of meatT. They’re just floppy and pink and sad.
Whereas my mom and my brother would sometimes buy a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store and by the end of the car ride home everything would smell real nice. I’m into rotisserie chickens, conceptually.
Chicken is a pointless garbage meat that is never worth eating in the first place.
The vehemence of your comment made me COL (chuckle out loud).
Oh, no one ever really wants to eat poultry (except duck, maybe, sometimes).
There is nothing on earth that can convince me otherwise.
But.. fried chicken? o_O
If I could eat just the battered, deep fried skins of fried chicken, I would.
This is delving into the deep dark secrets of my idiosyncratic food habits over the years, BUT: when I was a kid I would pick apart fried chicken and eat it with a bowl of jasmine rice, and my favorite parts were always the battered fried skins. I would try to ration them out appropriately with chicken meat and then save the rest for the end, when I could just eat a lingering bowl of rice and fried, battered chicken skin. This is how I would eat Popeyes spice fried chicken at home, with no one else around.
o_O
p.s. I haven’t done this in years!
Deep-fried breading is, at all times, a delight. Don’t pretend like the meat inside is any part of the appeal.
This is incorrect for many reasons, including but not limited to fried chicken, arroz con pollo, and coq au vin.
LIAR. I always want to eat poultry. All the poultry. ALL THE POULTRY FOR ME.
Agreed. It’s like nature’s tofu. There’s a reason everything “tastes like chicken” – because chicken has no natural flavor of its own, and can thus be made to taste like anything… ish. Give me red meat, or seafood.
I get it. The chickens are paying you to say this nonsense, right?
No, seriously. I understand that it is technically food. I have had all of the myriad varieties and preparations, and it always tastes like ‘why bother?’ to me.
It would be so easy to be vegetarian if chicken was the only animal protein available.
But the chickens do not love me. I want to enslave them for their eggs.
Just don’t feed cooked BONES to your dog because that leads to badness and perforated guts. :((((
Ugh, yes.
Raw bones are A+ though. My dog has better teeth than I do.
Disagree! I mean yeah absolutely for flavor keep the skin and bones off. But for motivating myself to cook, then boneless skinless breasts are where its at. Drop them in a saucepan with chicken stock and cook until no longer pink inside. If you have the energy shred them with your hands (or a kitchenaid) and put in a ziploc. They might be dry but they will be done and as long as you don’t eat them plain you wont notice.
Now, if someone wants to come to my apartment and cook me all me meals I will happily eat a skin on roast chicken.
Plus my mother always just boiled the boneless skinless ones and shredded them and put them in plain rice for me to eat as a kid. My dogs vet had recommended we cook it this way when we couldn’t find his prescription food, and it was just as delicious for my sister and I : P
I agreed before I even read the article. Also, chicken thighs are like $2.39/lb even at Whole Foods and are great for curry/Asian dishes.
Or just buy a couple of live chickens and a machete.
In. I’m really into machetes right now.
What’s that? You need someone to be the pro-thigh advocate in the comments?
True story: nutritionally speaking, pound-for-pound, boneless-skinless thighs and breasts are basically identical. The notion that you have to eat dry, flavorless, horrifying white meat for “health”? A lie, which the chicken marketers have been happily promoting for decades now. (While also selling the “leftover” thighs for a fraction of the price.)
Also, if more people start buying boneless skinless thighs (which hold flavor and moisture in cooking far better than their terrifying breast-meat-squiggle equivalents), then it’ll be easier for me when it comes time to make my fettucine alfredo and don’t want to have to buy ten pounds of “value pack” to do it.
and @stuffisthings, check out the chicken thighs M. Pepin makes here…. cue Homer Simpson gurgling sounds. http://youtu.be/4GokR2C9wy0
<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/4GokR2C9wy0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
Jacques! You stuck your chickeny hand right in the salt!
Good recipe though.
Can we take a second to talk about the endless fucking Crockpot recipes on Pinterest that use chicken breasts and then everybody complains that it comes out dry and rubbery? Duh of course it does, that recipe isn’t your friend. You took the one cut of meat without any fat and then you cooked it for eight fucking hours. THIGHS, PEOPLE.
Your second is over; you may talk about Pinterest again in a year’s time.
Thanks! Just letting you know, I’ve scheduled my Medium eyeroll for mid-January.
Noted! *writes DIANA MEDIUM ANGRY with elaborate quill pen*
Ah ok I totally have the same eyeroll for Medium but there is a writer on there that does great articles on women in technology. Her name is Shanley and you can read her stuff here. I highly recommend: Funding Feminism in Tech, Essential Practices for Women in Technology, Misogyny and the Marketing Chick, and Analyzing Diversity in Your Workplace (or really anything she’s written).
Sorry to add one more thing to the list (since it doesn’t have anything to do with chicken) but this is the best one: An Open Letter to Women in Technology. I just found her articles and I’m a little obsessed. A choice quote:
“Make no fucking mistake that you occupy your cushy tech salary, your mid-level management job, your paltry access to power by permission of the patriarchy. It is a deal with the devil. They will pay you, and let you make small career advances, in exchange for acting more like a poster child than a revolutionary, more like a mother than a peer, more like a secretary than a boss. In exchange for you shutting the fuck up, in exchange for you being content with your cute women-in-technology dinners, in exchange for your affirmative-action speaking slots, in exchange for you focusing more on “community building” than burning shit down. In exchange, in exchange, in exchange.”
Going on a tangent here to say that I am not partaking of turkey this Thanksgiving (US version) because it is nearly impossible to not end up with a dried out turkey plate on day two. Thinking maybe salmon and crab instead.
A friend of mine hooked me up with a turkey soup recipe that’s basically just: turkey, stock, carrots, egg noodles, lemon juice, thyme, paprika, seasoning to taste and it’s divine. Simmer everything in stock until appropriately soft. Excellent way to use up turkey that’s not sandwiches, especially if you made stock out of the bones.
My wife is pushing for duck.
One of our grocery stores here is offering “Canada Goose, previously frozen,” as if that’s something people want to eat. We call Canada Geese “golf-course geese” here.
Goose is duck’s fattier cousin and also the food of gods.
Weirdly, considering how much I love all the poultry (especially things like duck and quail), I can’t say I’ve ever had goose. I bet I’d like it.
Goose sounds good, but not previously frozen golf-course goose. IMHO
Yaaaay, another one! (I’ve long been of the conviction that if whole roasted turkeys were actually pleasant to cook and consume, we would do it more than once per year.)
My family swore off turkey years ago, and never, ever looked back. Are you on the Pacific side of the country, by chance? Because late November is peak Dungeoness crab season, which is why it’s what we transitioned to originally. (I live on the warm-ocean side, now, so my dead animals are sadly less seasonally appropriate.)
I had a seafood feast for T-day last year and it was AMAZING. Are you on a Coast? Are you on the West Coast?? If so, get you some Dungeness crab! Seasons starts right around Thanksgiving and those crabby assholes are not only delicious, but they look awesome in a pile in the middle of your table.
Thanksgiving ham! Also Christmas ham. Basically, ham is the perfect delicious, not overly complicated holiday food.
And obviously you can save the bones in a creepy bag full of other discarded animal parts and vegetable leavings you keep in your freezer for ‘making stock.’
Please just don’t be my housemate who has approximately 5 pounds of random whatthefuckever odds and ends taking up a quarter of our very precious freezer space for “making stock” which he will never ever do.
My dad is always trying to convince me to do this, because HE makes chicken stock on a regular basis from carcasses he saves, but he never remembers that my freezer is about half the size of his. His stock is great, though.
I’m gonna do it one of these days!
CHICKEN SKIN POPCORN. You guys. Everyone. Chicken skin popcorn. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/…
Ooh, this hurts! I’ve been buying boneless for YEARS! They are easy to cut up for soups and stews, and I don’t have to debone the whole darn thing forever while my teenagers are gnawing on my legs for nourishment (talk about chewing the fat!),
However, I DO agree that the bone-in chicken is tastier and I don’t mind roasting with the skin on- I like a good crispy skin! It’s just worth the time and trouble to me to get the boneless, skinless kind so I can get dinner done faster.
It might be worth taking some classes on how to quickly debone a chicken properly- the bones would make excellent broth and any meat bits I missed can go to my kitties as a treat (the meat ONLY- don’t write me hate mail about the skin and bones!)
So there. Nyah.
Interestingly, I find that I, when I’m using my smoker, I prefer skinless boneless chicken breasts over skin-on poultry in general. Bird skin gets tough and leathery in the smoker, and it’s a complicated song and dance to fix it.. Also, the low-and-slow cooking method yields extremely moist and tender chicken breast.
But the main reason I will often choose skinless boneless breast over other kinds of poultry is because, once cooked, I can shred it with forks or fingers, and it really is the best meat for chicken salad. The drier flesh and the way it shreds give it maximum absorption of mayonnaise or other fat-carrying substance.
Google “Reyna Pepiada” and you’ll see why this may be important to me.
Have you tried using the smoked skin in soups, in place of ham or some such thing? It works remarkably well.
My next roast chicken challenge is mastering the spatchcock cut, which is some kind of magic. Minimizes cooking time while maximizing crispy skin surface area!
PUUUPPPUUPUPUPUUPPPYYYYYY
Dogs are the sweetest, and I wish they lived forever.
In Japan, all chicken is sold with skin, but without bone. You can rarely buy whole birds. They eat skin, and, in fact, you can buy grilled skewers (yakitori) which is nothing but skin in restaurants which specialize in such types of grilled food. I learned to cook chicken with the skin and I dislike not having it there when I buy breasts in the U.S.
That being said, I hate that there is only one other option and that is both skin and bone or without either. The bone is only helpful if you are grilling, using a crockpot, or baking. It’s a huge hassle when you are pan-cooking it as it’s hard to evenly cook it. The skin will keep the meat moist. The bone will just keep it raw near the bone. I wish it was sold the same way as it is in Japan (without bone, with skin). I never actually ate the skin (I think it’s really not tasty, even if it is crispy or brown), but it was immensely helpful in cooking without drying out the meat.
The only thing I take issue with is the recommendation to buy thighs instead of breast. I realize thighs are more nutritious, but the flavor is stronger and the texture quite different. I’m not a fan of meat in general and chicken breasts are mild enough and have a texture I prefer. Not everyone buys breasts because they’re diet-conscious. Some people actually like them better from a pure enjoyment perspective (I have disliked dark meat since childhood – long before I knew that it was supposed to be too fatty for people).
It’s a huge hassle when you are pan-cooking it as it’s hard to evenly cook it. The skin will keep the meat moist. The bone will just keep it raw near the bone.
Oh thank god, it’s not just me then. Part of the reason why my braising has been a moderate success and not an absolute one is because I’ve been horrified by the rawness of the meat by the bone.. even though the chicken has been braising away on the stove for over an hour. I am probably doing it wrong, but last night was a lot of “WTF, chicken, you’ve been cooking for nearly two hours.”
Great, the food police, just what the world needs more of. Gross. I’m going to go poach a skinless, boneless chicken breast in your honor. Or maybe I’ll make a stew with skin-on thighs and then leave a mountain of flabby, gray, wet skin on your doorstep. You know, after I’ve spent five hours burning my fingers picking it off.
I don’t understand the article. Equilibrium brine at 1.5% salt, use a thermometer, keep the poaching liquid at about 150F, and they won’t be overcooked. I don’t buy them, because I use bones and skin for chicken stock and cooking fat, but I’ll cook them.
Poaching is way better in the summer anyway. You don’t really heat up your kitchen.
The food police is just a lump of mashed potatoes with a badge and a tiny gun made of old gravy.
I’m lazy. That’s why I buy it.
Don’t be silly, the only reason anyone would buy it is because they’re a silly, misinformed girl on a diet.
I do not think that we read the same article! *fans you gently*
I enjoy food trolling as much as the next person, but you are ignoring the context here, perhaps because you are not aware of it. In fact, I hope you are that lucky, smart person who has never exposed themselves to paleo broscience bullshit. I will not burden you with it. Stay innocent.
Anyway, if I wanted to be chided for cooking easier, faster to prepare food instead of the more pure and natural alternative, I would read Michael Pollan.
P.S. I am currently seeing some different, weird comments page where suddenly I do not have an option to log into my IntenseDebate account and there are no links to accounts or thumb ups. What’s up with that?
I am so rarely accused of being affiliated with broscience, it’s almost a pleasant sensation. I don’t give a shit about anyone’s diet, I just like cheaper and tastier food.
Try this for questions about commenting issues: http://the-toast.net/2013/10/28/let-me-help-you-w…
That’s nice. There are lots of reasons to eat food.
Thanks for the link, I must have missed that when it was published. Technology, man.
The commenting issues are from the chicken fat Nicole has smeared across our servers. She has now taken to writing EVO PSYCH IS REAL in cow’s blood across our tech intern. Please send help.
Wait, what about this makes it sounds like I am on a diet?
Oh my! You’re dog looks JUST LIKE my dog, Nyla. OMG so adorable!!! What kind of dog was he? My girl is a golden retriever/cocker spaniel mix I adopted from a shelter. And she always gets some of my chicken skin, but not all of it because omnomnom chicken skin!!
He was this collie-chow-golden-shepherd thing. He was pretty rad.
Ahhhh so weird, I literally had a dream last night that you had a blog called Cliff(e)s Notes, which is totally almost the same, though less gloriously Canadian, as (Ni)Coles Notes! Did you…visit me in my dream? Do I have incredibly minor and non-useful psychic powers?
YOU GUYS. The key to juicy and soft chicken breast is to soak it in milk for a few hours/overnight. Think buttermilk fried chicken. Other parts of the chicken are good, and Imma let you finish, but MILK.
I don’t always roast chicken, though. A lot of the time I’m sauteing or stir-frying it in a wok, and a lot of the time I throw it in the crock pot with a little salsa or bbq sauce and get it super-super tender while I’m at work and then shred it with a fork and throw it in tacos or enchiladas or put it on a pizza! If I throw skinned chicken in the crock pot it just falls off and gets rubbery. Thighs also do not seem to work in my crockpot chicken recipe, either – breasts are definitely the best for this. I’m not knocking roast chicken, but sometimes a little variety is nice.
I mean, I could buy the half-breasts and then skin and debone them myself, but it doesn’t seem like a sin to pay the grocery store butcher to do it for me. That’s part of his job, like buying deveined shrimp from the seafood counter.
ON A PIZZA. You might have just changed my life.
People always make the easiest choice.
I made oven-baked chicken thighs tonight and I took the skin off before breading them (she said, her head hung low in shame). I thought skin was supposed to be horribly fatty and non-nutritious and bad for you! I was trying to be responsible!
What drives me insane right now, though, is that thighs in my local (small town Ontario) supermarket are the same price as breasts much of the time, and that half the time you cannot buy skin-on bone-in pieces of meat even if you want to. What I’d really like is to buy a whole chicken cut up in pieces to save me wrangling with the carcass, but weirdly a) none of the nearby supermarkets seem to offer this option and b) it is actually just as cheap or cheaper to buy one of those pre-cooked family-size rotisserie chickens from Sobey’s deli than to buy an uncooked whole (tiny) chicken at my local No Frills. I don’t understand it at all.
Agh! I can’t stand the taste of dark meat chicken. Breasts & wings are all I eat. Occasionally I can stomach a thigh. But admittedly I prefer to eat the fried, crunchy, crackly, flavorful fried chicken skin.. and if it were acceptable I’d skip the meat and eat only the skin in the box, off any color piece.
Cooking chicken with bone and skin has basically seen me through my PhD thesis, in which I spend most of my time at my uni campus. What I do is get a bunch of chicken pieces from my supermarket (these are legs/thighs/breasts with skin and bone on), stick them in a big pot with vegetables, garlic, onion, chilli powder, herbs, water, vinegar and whatever random flavour sauces I might have, and put it all on low before I go to bed. When I wake up, I have nicely cooked chicken– the skin keeps the flavour beautifully. Over the next day or so (I often put the pot in the fridge), I de-skin-and-bone the chicken; it ends up in helpful little bags in my freezer, ready to be defrosted and added to salad/stir fries/pies/whatever — the flavour and moistness remains, even after freezing and defrosting. The vegetables+sauces the chicken has cooked in makes yummy stock/soup bases (also in little bags in the freezer) — and if you put it in the fridge for a day, the fat rises to the top and you can skim it off. Cheap, versatile, low-fat chicken which usually lasts me at least a month, often two — and NO BONELESS/SKINLESS rubbish.
you can also just buy a whole chicken and cut it up yourself. People have been doing this……. forever. Not that hard. Cheaper. Utilizes all the bird. Make chicken soup out of the leftovers.
I agree and sick and tired of the police telling you what you can eat and can’t eat. Someone has decided that chicken skin is bad for you so they will make that decision for you and don’t sell it. Miss my oven baked chicken breast!
I buy a bunch of bone-in chicken thighs, sear them with onions, then go on to make whatever stew I want. I pick the chicken out after cooking, pinch it with the tongs, and the meat falls right off. Couldn’t be easier. BONUS: since I don’t have to cut up the meat, there’s very little time I have to spend actually touching raw chicken.
I have been numerous times to buy skinless boneless chicken breasts only to leave empty handed as our Grocery Store doesn’t sell them. How dumb is that?
Don’t be silly, the skin is being sold to high end restaurants