The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

breasts. Rule Numero Uno for great chicken is to start by
buying skin-on, bone-in chicken. Leaving the skin on the
chicken not only prevents the breast meat from overcooking
at the surface, it also allows you to let the chicken cook for a
longer time on one side without the danger of uneven
cooking you’d get with steaks or chops. Its because chicken
skin, with its abundance of fat, is a natural insulator. Think
about it: fat, through millions of years of evolution, has been
designed to help regulate temperature. Its purpose is to even
out abrupt changes in temperature so that animals can move
relatively freely between cold and hot environments without
dying of shock. Perhaps it was never intended to see a
situation as extreme as the refrigerator to the skillet, but it
performs its role admirably nevertheless.
With a layer of skin on one side and an insulating bone
on the other, it becomes exponentially easier to cook
chicken evenly. All you’ve got to do is cook it skin side
down first, in a hot skillet (don’t try and move it until it
releases itself freely), then flip it over and toss it into a
moderately hot oven to finish. So long as you’re careful
about monitoring its temperature and allow it to rest, never
again will you have to deal with anything other than moist,
juicy, tender meat. And, just like with pork chops, brining
your chicken before cooking can help it to become even
juicier, though it’s a largely unnecessary step, provided
you’re careful with your thermometer, and it has the same
drawback as when brining pork—the chicken flavor gets
diluted with water. I see it more as a safeguard against
overcooking.