The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

PAN-SEARED CHICKEN PARTS There’s a terrible problem sweeping this country, an insidious one that has managed ...

beef and pork, chicken meat tightens as you cook it, and by the time it’s reached 165°F, it’s irre ...

breasts. Rule Numero Uno for great chicken is to start by buying skin-on, bone-in chicken. ...

BRINING MEAT: THE BIG TRADE-OFF Cold, hard fact time: all meat dries out and toughens as it cooks ...

salted and left to sit overnight before cooking (a technique sometimes referred to as dry-brining) ...

STARTING WEIGHT AFTER SOAKING Plain 100% 99.1% Brined 100% 111.6% Salted 100% 99.4% ...

Water 100% 103.2% As you can see, while a plain chicken breast lost about 17 percent of its ...

less moisture. So, which method is better: brining or extended salting? From the chart alone, you’d ...

recommend cooking all pork, beef, and lamb to at least 145°F—well into the medium to medium- ...

MINIMUM SAFE COOKING TIME VERSUS TEMPERATURE FOR CHICKEN What you find is that there isn’t a simple tempera ...

consume; rather, it’s a combination of temperature and time. The line on the graph above essentially ...

So, at 165°F, the chicken is safe pretty much instantaneously. This is why the USDA sets 165°F as ...

140°F: Pinkish-tinged and almost translucent; extremely soft, with the texture of a warm steak; fleshy. ...

KNIFE SKILLS: How to Break Down a Chicken If there’s one knife skill that can save you money and make yo ...

STEP 1: THE TOOLS You’ll need a sharp chef’s knife and a pair of poultry shears or a cleaver. Extra coo ...

STEP 2: SPREAD ’EM Grab the chicken by the drumstick and pull the leg out from the body until the skin is str ...

STEP 3: THE FIRST INCISION Start the operation by cutting through the skin between the leg and the body. Don’t cut ...

STEP 4: POP THE JOINT Grab the leg in one hand and twist it down away from the body until the ball jo ...

STEP 5: REMOVE THE THIGH Use your chef’s knife to completely remove the leg by cutting through the joint you just ...

STEP 6: THE OTHER FOOT Repeat steps 2 through 5 on the other leg. ...