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Cooking Chicken Just Right with Chris Kimball

While cooking pan-roasted chicken breasts, Chris Kimball points out to Renee Montagne one of the most important tools in the kitchen: a digital thermometer.
Ben Bergman/NPR
While cooking pan-roasted chicken breasts, Chris Kimball points out to Renee Montagne one of the most important tools in the kitchen: a digital thermometer.

Americans eat more chicken than any other kind of meat — on average 87 pounds a year per person. But they often do a terrible job of preparing it.

"Most of the time, people are over-cooking it," says Chris Kimball, host of America's Test Kitchen on PBS. We're a nation eating "bad, overcooked chicken," he says — but it doesn't have to be that way.

Kimball has tested hundreds of recipes for his new cookbook, The Best Chicken Recipes, devoted exclusively to the bird.

The key to a good chicken dish begins with selecting the chicken, he says.

Visiting the poultry section of a Santa Monica, Calif., supermarket, Kimball says store-bought chickens generally are "grown to have small legs and large breasts — everyone likes white meat. So this is just average chicken."

For an above-average bird, Kimball recommends searching out a kosher brand. That's because they're individually slaughtered by hand, their salt flavor helps the meat retain water for a juicier taste, and the salt tends to make chicken more tender.

He says bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts are more flavorful than the boneless, skinless kind.

Before you get started, Kimball says, don't be afraid to make mistakes — he says that's the best way to learn.

"Making bad food is the beginning of becoming a good cook," he says.

With the chicken and a digital thermometer in hand, Kimball walks Renee Montagne through preparing one of the recipes, for pan-roasted chicken breasts with vermouth, leek and tarragon pan sauce.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.