Topic: Tenderising Chicken

[loveitspicy]

I agree with Vinders as well - which i omitted to put on my earlier reply - After boiling is reached we turn down the heat and leave on a rolling boil for 4 mins ish then turn off the heat. Leave for a few mins (5) in the boiling water then take the chicken out - pre cooked - simple and tender

best, Rich

[indianwells]

I use a meat thermometer, the sort with an extended probe on a wire. I have found it indispensable when cooking all meats, whether in an indian dish or otherwise. For pre-cooked chicken I put a few breasts in cold water in a large pan with the probe in the centre of one breast. When it reaches 140f I take them all out and let them rest. Once slightly cooled (the internal temp will rise another 10f or so) I cut into cubes. Then I cook the sauce and put the chicken cubes in once I've taken the sauce off the heat. The chicken will finish cooking to tender perfection in the hot sauce.

[Invisible Mike]

You don't need no imported chickens. Cut it up into chunks, and pressure cook it with your preferred precook spices etc plus a little extra water. 8 minutes from the second it comes up to pressure. Done! Super soft chicken breast.

[macferret]

If you start with a good raw ingredient, I think it's pretty hard to end up with tough chicken - it is very forgiving, and very flexible as the wide variety of different cooking methods on this thread show.
This is not an easy subject, but a lot of BIRs use chicken that has been bulked by injection with protein/brine solution. It not only inflates the meat-packer's profits, but results in a tenderized product.
I don't like the idea myself. We buy chicken in bulk from a wholesalers and I have checked carefully on the labeling for any indication of pre-treatment - there is none. (The chicken happens to be Halal, by the way, which is interesting because the wholesaler is for the French restaurant / catering market, which is not widely noted for its use of Halal meat.)
Our method is simply to fry off some minced onion/ginger/garlic in quite a lot of oil and cook the chicken chunks with a little gravy, haldi, bay leaf, mix powder and salt.  It fries at first but then develops a liquor. We cook for 8 mins past this point then leave it to rest with the lid on for 20 mins. Our temperature guide is to exceed 80C for 10 mins.  We don't add any liquid other than a little gravy as that just ends up making a soup.

[livo]

Either buttermilk or a mix of milk and yogurt, marinade for several hours is a regular process for fried chicken.  A little sugar and salt in the mix helps.  Just don't ask how to tenderise a cuttlefish.  I know it can be done but I, sure as anything, cant do it.

[Onions]

How about the chinese method for velveting chicken and meat? Basicly left in cornflour for a bit IIRC. They add soy etc of course, being as it's for a chinese, but for Indian, use equally reflective spices- perhaps a touch of mix?

[jalfreziT]

the Brazilian brand of which he wrote. 

Brazilian Chicken

I know this is an old topic but I have good info to share on this subject. In my old life we used tons of Brazilian chicken breast meat every day.

At the time (and maybe this is still the case), the EU imposed different tarrifs on different types of chicken meat imports from outside the EU. One way to achieve a lower tarrif was to "process" the breast meat in some way.

The Brazilian supplier would add 1.2% salt to their breast meat. Now for those who don't know, a reasonable level of salt in a meal is somewhere around 0.5-0.7%. Once you get up to 1.2%, the product starts to taste "salty". Obviously those who designed the tarrif criteria knew this, and knew that this "salted chicken" would not be acceptable to the average housewife/husband, and thus the tarrif helped protect the EU chicken industry.

We used to use this salted chicken  in chicken nuggets, burgers, etc. The factory recipe called for 0.6% of salt in the meat mix. This was easily achieved by mixing half a ton of 1.2% salted chicken with half a ton of "normal" chicken. The resulting meat mix had 0.6% salt, bang on target.

Now this Brazilian 1.2% salted chicken breast meat also found its way in to the food service sector, i.e. those companies that supply the restaurant trade. The substantially lower cost was unresistable for many. I can, and have, noticed this salted chicken being used in curries. Questioning the owner and they admit, yes, it is Brazilian salted chicken, but the price is too good to resist. And anyway, most customers just don't notice it.

Salting chicken can help tenderise it, and this could be one reason why some people wonder why their home-cooked chicken doesn't have the same mouth-feel.

How to get the best results at home

The first thing to realise is that the root cause of "tough chicken" could be totally out of your control.

During the slaughter process, birds are first stunned before having their throats cut, and then they are hung upside down to bleed out. The two main types of stunning are electric and gas (pretty much like your cookers in the UK ). Electric stunning can be problematic if the stun isn't applied properly and at the right level. It can cause the muscle to seize up, resulting in tough meat.

There is also a second theory about the stress level of the birds at point of slaughter, but there was less hard evidence for this.

Guidelines to maximise chance of tender chicken

1. Start off with good raw material. Buy fresh chicken where you can, from reputable suppliers that have full traceability of their supply chain. Cheap chicken is cheap for a reason. Cuts are made in the supply chain, processes are not controlled and audited to the same level.

2. Try to avoid cooking twice. You're just doubling the opportunities to dry out your chicken. Freezing in itself also causes loss of moisture.

3. Invest in a digital probe cooking thermometer. 8

[mickyp]

As well as marinading the chicken (lemon juice is good) always cook from room temperature, ie not from fridge to pan, let it warm up for an hour or so.

[jalfreziT]

As well as marinading the chicken (lemon juice is good) always cook from room temperature, ie not from fridge to pan, let it warm up for an hour or so.

I've always thought that the "bringing meat up to room temperature to increase tenderness" was a myth.

I wouldn't advise letting any meat sit around in the warm, as any baceria present will only grow quicker.

[mickyp]

The idea is to allow the meat, that is all m to relax and reach room temperature before cooking, "sitting around in the warm". was not what was
being suggested.