Dinner fail, so very fail.

[thistlechaser]

While I now have two ways I can make my chicken breast dinner, I know I need more, so I tried a new way out tonight. I had a recipe using greek yogurt, lemon juice, and lemon zest to marinade it in. (Boy did the yogurt and lemon smell good! I could have eaten it with a spoon instead of using it for the chicken.)

I never know if I'm supposed to cover chicken when I bake it, but when in doubt I generally do since I figure that would keep it moister. But tonight it did something odd. The chicken shrunk to maybe a quarter of the original size and was nearly covered in what looked like water.

They were a really icky color (white) and the texture was odd. The first bite had okay flavor (lemon, nothing else), but that got old really quick. I didn't even come close to finishing it. (TV dinner to the rescue!)

Google tells me I probably poached my chicken. I really can't recommend doing that. I didn't use much lemon juice (a tablespoon or so), though maybe that was enough acid to partially cook it on its own? Whatever the cause, it didn't work at all.

Comments

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

I think maybe you got a chicken breast that was injected with water? Sometimes supermarkets do that to make the breasts plumper, the excuse being that it cooks up juicier. Also, did you start with a frozen piece of chicken?
Could there have been a coating of ice around it?

A tablespoon of lemon juice should not be enough liquid to poach it. Very odd...your kitchen adventures are more exciting and dangerous that the WOW campaigns!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

They were fresh, package claimed never frozen. I have a ton of them, the rest have been frozen. I'll be curious to see how the rest of them behave!

Very odd...your kitchen adventures are more exciting and dangerous that the WOW campaigns!

Ha ha, for sure!

[sahn.livejournal.com]

"The chicken shrunk to maybe a quarter of the original size and was nearly covered in what looked like water. They were a really icky color (white) and the texture was odd."

Sounds to me like the chicken ended up being overcooked. Keeping meat moist and flavorful has a lot to do with not overcooking it and very little to do with keeping it covered (though I'd say braising is an exception). When you bake meat, typically what you want to do is get the outer layer of the meat to a very high temperature (say 300+ degrees) to brown, while getting the interior of the meat to the target doneness without overcooking (about 170 degrees for chicken). By covering the meat, the meat is cooked by steam and water at about 212 degrees, which is too low a temperature for the meat to brown, but still high enough to overcook the meat if you cook it too long.

To properly poach meat, ideally you want to keep the temperature of the liquid not much higher than the target temperature of the food (so for a target temp of 170, you want to keep the temp of the liquid around 170-180). That makes poaching harder to do if you don't have some way to monitor the temperature of the liquid like a thermometer. By contrast, if the water is boiling, you know it's at 212 degrees, but that's too high for poaching. And if that happens, then it's more boiling than poaching.

Anyway... without reading the recipe, if it doesn't say anything about covering the meat, I'd leave it uncovered.

[sahn.livejournal.com]

To say all that more simply, covering the meat prevents burning but it doesn't prevent overcooking, and overcooking is what you should be worried about.

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

Seconded. The chicken sounds overcooked. Depending on the amount of yoghurt, the extra water could've been from the yoghurt curdling (acid + heat + yoghurt = curdle).

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Just whatever yogurt stuck to the chicken, I didn't add any extra. And yeah, I suspect it got overcooked, I tend to do that (I really worry about undercooking things and getting sick plus my thermometer stopped working).

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

That's very possible. I usually cook a whole boneless skinless chicken breast for 55 minutes, and these were tenders (maybe a quarter of the size/thickness) and it called to cook them for 40.

Anyway... without reading the recipe, if it doesn't say anything about covering the meat, I'd leave it uncovered.

Good to know, I'll do that from now on. Thanks!

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

A whole boneless skinless chicken breast only needs to cook for 30-35 minutes at 350F. For me that has always produced consistent results -- tender, just juicy enough, not over-cooked, not under-cooked. Don't cover it since that will reduce the heat at it which it cooks and will prevent the surface from browning.

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

This is baked, without liquid, in a pyrex dish.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Mine is metal (usually sitting on a larger flat metal pan so I can get it out of the oven easier), so that probably matters somewhat.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, huh. Thanks!