thistlechaser (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thistlechaser) wrote2011-09-14 08:52 pm
thistlechaser) wrote2011-09-14 08:52 pm
Dinner fail, so very fail.
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.
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.
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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.
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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!
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