This is How You Make Perfectly Cooked Chicken Breasts

I'm tired of making and eating dry, flavorless

chicken

. Well, I have a perfect, absolutely foolproof way to

make

Pansear Chicken every time, and since we can, we'll add some pan sauce to it too. What's here? My chef de commis, Billy Parisi. and you know, we believe that homemade food made from scratch just tastes better, but I don't just show you recipes, I teach you techniques, it's about understanding the basic fundamentals of cooking, like in

this

skillet

chicken

. I will teach you how to cook correctly. Make it perfect every time you do it. The first thing we're going to start with is these chicken

breasts

.

I'm going to use boneless, skinless chicken

breasts

that weigh between 7 and 9 ounces, and you should too. Crazy gigantic like 20 ounce chicken breasts you find at the grocery store, that's not natural my friends chickens aren't that big you need to cook with something between that 7 to 9 ounce mark and now let's season these breasts of chicken. with a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. I like to use sea salt because it's natural, it tastes better, and you'll actually use less when seasoning peak season, by that I mean about a foot above what you're seasoning so you can cover every stinky square inch of that food to that is seasoned properly and tastes delicious.

The same goes for freshly ground black pepper. You should be about a foot away from what you are seasoning. Make sure you do

this

on both sides. now let's talk about the oil for a second because obviously this is what you're going to cook with, no matter what you use, it's all about the smoke point and getting the oil to smoke lightly before you grill it. I have a There are a few different oils here that we can talk about just to give you that knowledge. I have some super healthy, super neutral avocado oil and the flavor has a smoke point around 500 degrees.

Canola oil, which is high in omega-3s, also has a smoke point. point around 400 degrees, the last extra virgin olive oil that I love and that I am going to use in this recipe has a smoke point of 400 degrees. I feel super comfortable using olive oil. I'm Italian, it's just what we do there and I love it. the flavor it gives off unless you are trying to

make

a smoked food or an ethnic dish where they don't use olive oil, so with that being said, now is the time to pan sear and when it comes to selecting pans, I generally like them using iron or stainless steel are environmentally friendly they don't give off any strange chemicals but let me stop and say this, many times I understand what type of pan I should buy or what type of pan I should use.

I'm just telling you that I know how to cook. on a rock, once you learn how to cook properly you will be able to do it on anything, you will have the confidence to cook on literally anything, whether it's Calphalon, stainless steel, cast iron or carbon steel, it doesn't matter, it's about understanding those fundamental techniques so you can cook on anything, so let's go to the stove with our chicken and olive oil. I'm going to use cast iron here because I love this pan and guess what, when it heats up, it secretes iron. Iron is good for you.

We're going to turn it up to high heat after about 20 to 30 seconds or so, we're going to add our olive oil directly to the pan and once it starts to smoke slightly, that's the perfect time to start cooking, but let me stop here, they don't. If I want this smoke to come out of the pan, that means you're burning the oil and the nutrients are on fire, my friends, so once it starts to smoke lightly, let's add our chicken breasts directly to the pan and don't crowd it. . are about a half inch to an inch apart so it doesn't steam, we're

perfectly

browned here my friends, and immediately turn the heat down to medium high and if you're cooking on one of those very hot burners, go ahead and turn it down. over medium heat, which is what I'm doing after exactly three and a half to four minutes, turn the chicken over and you can see it's an absolutely beautiful golden brown.

Now we're going to transfer these chicken breasts directly to the 375 degree oven. The chicken breasts will only take about 10 to 12 minutes to finish cooking, but you know what I said, bread sauce, my son Karl asked me to mix them up a little. skillet sauce with this

perfectly

cooked

chicken, no problem, what I'm going to do is head to the cutting board. I have a shallot that we want to cut into small cubes and if you need to learn how to do it, be sure to check it out. Check out my knife cutting video which will hook you up with almost every major knife cut out there.

You can also use a yellow onion here, no problem, set it aside now for the garlic, let's just cut the ends off here and then using the side. of the knife give it some puree this just breaks it up so it's easier to finally chop it which is exactly what we're going to do here once it's chopped set it aside and now I have some fresh thyme just I roll it up while it's on the twig, there's a lot of flavor in the twig and if you chop it finely there are no woody stems, crazy thing, just a teaspoon here, fresh thyme goes a long way, let's get it ready.

That aside and now the chicken breasts are ready, let's take them out, they look absolutely beautiful, we'll put them right on the cutting board we'll let them rest for two to four minutes, it's important to let all the protein cook rest for at least two or four minutes, sometimes even five and six, and when you cook barbecue like you see in my smoked chicken or pulled pork recipe, you rest for 30 to 45 minutes when you do it, it soaks up the juices well. going back to that protein makes it tender, flavorful and obviously incredibly juicy. Now let's plug this pan sauce so take the same pan you

cooked

with make sure your towel is around the handle because it's steaming hot from the oven hit it back on the burner and on medium heat what we're going to do is add to the shallots a little bit of garlic and we're just going to stir and sauté this for about two or three minutes to get a nice light brown color to the garlic and the shallots and the next part is completely optional I'm going to deglaze with a little bit of white wine You don't have to do this stage if you don't have white wine at home, don't worry, we're going to cook it for a second, which is the French term that means it's almost gone, so once it has evaporated and incorporated into the onions and the garlic, our shallot and garlic, in this case now we're going to add a little bit of chicken broth, we're going to turn the heat up to high and we're just going to cook it for about 2 minutes, reduce it, let some of those flavors concentrate, let the sauce thicken it a little bit and then to finish it off we're going to spread it with a little bit of whole unsalted butter, a little bit of that fresh thyme and then of course salt. and pepper, stir it in, make sure it's completely combined and when you make any sauce, I was always taught to finish with a little bit of butter, it adds a little bit of body, a little bit of nice brightness to that sauce, a lot of fat and a lot of flavor, friends mine Now let's go to our cutting board with the pan sauce.

I'm going to start cutting the chicken breast. You can see that it is juicy, it is perfectly cooked, white in color, the way everyone likes it and then it gets better. I'm just going to put it on a small plate, pour that garlic and thyme sauce over the top and perfect my friends perfectly and seared chicken breast with a good pan sauce every time it's tender, it's flavorful and it's incredibly juicy now it's your It's time to master the art of perfectly roasted chicken starting with my chicken cacciatore recipe or my chicken rice recipe and we'll see you in the next video.