Revolutionary Technique for Cooking Chicken Breasts Revealed. A simple yet game-changing method for preparing chicken breasts has been making the rounds online, and it's about time it got the attention it deserves. According to a New York Times recipe, the key to tender and flavorful chicken lies in the way you cut it. Instead of the traditional method of cutting the breast in half horizontally, a new approach involves slicing partially through the breast, then turning the sides out to create "flaps" that can be flattened. This technique, which is said to be more effective than butterflying, breaks down the muscle fibers in a way that leads to a more tender and juicy final product.
Maybe others already know this one, but it's new to me, as someone who's frustratedly cooked chicken breasts for over half a century now. You can see the technique most clearly in this video (which I *think* is non-paywalled--I was able to load it on DuckDuckGo private search). Basically, set the breast on the cutting board upside down with the thick end away from you, slice partially but not all the way through down the middle of the breast, cutting more shallowly as the breast tapers, then turn each side piece away from the center 90 degrees, cut each partway through creating two "flaps" per side, lay them flat like opening two small books, and flatten the whole thing gently. To me this is *so* much easier than trying to cut the entire breast in half horizontally, and, as Genevieve Ko notes in the NYT recipe which this video accompanies, "This cutting approach is better than butterflying because the muscle fibers end up shorter and running in different directions. Chicken breasts often taste bland because those fibers uniformly run in the same direction and the very large breasts now sold in markets still end up quite thick after butterflying." submitted by /u/kata_north [link] [comments]
