Food & Receipts

Hot or Cold Water: The Secret to Perfectly Cooked Chicken

Boiled chicken is a favorite dish for many people. However, not everyone knows how to boil chicken to make it flavorful and prevent the skin from cracking.

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29 December, 2023

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How to Boil Fragrant and Crack-Free Chicken

Boiling chicken is not as simple as it seems. Just a little carelessness and the meat of the chicken will be ruined, cracked or not visually appealing. To prevent this situation, follow the detailed instructions below.

Choosing the chicken is a very important step

You should choose to buy native chickens, if you choose to buy live chickens, you should pay attention to choosing healthy chickens, with shiny fur, close to the body, bright feathers. With ready-to-cook chicken, choose a chicken with light yellow skin naturally and evenly thin throughout the body, firm meat, small buoy, less yellow fat in the neck and thigh. Boiled industrial chicken will be soft, not crispy and delicious, so you should choose native or free-range chicken.

Put the chicken in cold water before boiling

Put the chicken in the pot as soon as the water is cold, so that the meat will gradually cook from the outside in. If you put it in when the water is boiling, the chicken will be difficult to cook evenly and the skin will crack. If it is frozen chicken, it needs to be completely thawed before boiling. Otherwise, not only will you have to boil for a long time and not know when the meat is cooked.

Note: When boiling chicken, leave the chicken belly. The boiling pot should not be too large because the cooking time will be long or too small will make the chicken not cooked evenly.

Keep the fire low when the boiling water boils

When boiling the chicken, pay attention to the chicken belly facing downwards and pour the water into the pot so that the whole chicken is submerged, choose a pot that is not too large or too small for boiling. When the water in the pot boils, at this time, turn down the heat, because if it boils vigorously, the meat in the thighs will shrink up, the finished product will be very unappealing. After the water has boiled for about 5 minutes, turn the gas down to the minimum, leave it for another 5 minutes, then turn it off and cover it tightly for about 20 minutes.

You can test if the chicken is cooked by using a chopstick to poke it, if the chopstick can easily pierce through, and the water that comes out is not pink, then it is cooked.

It takes about 20 minutes to boil a delicious and fast chicken (usually 30 minutes), but to have evenly cooked chicken with shiny yellow skin, it takes about 45-60 minutes (with low heat).

To make the chicken look moist and the skin color vibrant, after removing it from the pot, immediately immerse it in boiling water to cool it down, the colder the water the better. When the chicken is completely cooled, take it out and place it on a plate. If you don’t do this, the chicken skin will become dry and dull. Then, let the meat drain a little water, use 1 turmeric root peeled and then pounded to extract the juice, mix it with the fried chicken fat to spread a layer on the chicken skin, we will have a boiled chicken with shiny yellow and smooth skin.