Things You'll Need:
- Chicken
- Your favorite chicken recipe
- Tin Foil or a loose-fitting lid of some sort
- A sense of timing
- Patience
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Step 1
Whether you're roasting a whole chicken in the oven or grilling some breasts out on the grill, the first step to ensuring moist chicken is to avoid overcooking.
Chicken is fully cooked when it reaches 165 degrees fahrenheit at the center of its thickest point. With a whole chicken, stick a probe thermometer down there in between the thigh and drumstick to determine this. With experience, you will be able to just give the drumstick a wiggle and be able to determine doneness. If it wiggles freely and the juices are running clear, it's done. If it is still a bit stiff, it needs more time.
With individual chicken pieces, stick the thermometer into the thickest spot, down to the middle or right next to the bone. Again, you're looking for 165. Often, you don't even need a thermometer as you can just look at the chicken and know that it's done.
It's also important to note that the chicken will continue to cook a bit after it's removed from the heat source. Perhaps by 5 degrees or so. I often remove my chicken from the heat at about 160 or so.
And don't worry, if you overcook the chicken a bit, you can still ensure that it'll be very moist once you sit down to eat. I'd much rather err on the side of overcooked than undercooked when it comes to chicken. -
Step 2
Now that your chosen chicken dish is cooked thoroughly, it's time to eat, right? No. The chicken must rest. Leave it in the pan or dish you cooked it in, and cover it loosely with a piece of tin-foil or saran-wrap or something. If you barbecued the chicken, remove it from the grill and place it in a serving dish or on a plate, and then cover loosely.
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Step 3
This is the most important step to ensuring that your chicken retains its natural moisture. If you cut into it immediately like most people do, all that effort you put into creating delicious chicken will be wasted.
All that steam that rushes out of the meat and evaporates into the surrounding air is lost moisture. This cannot happen. The chicken must rest long enough to allow the juices to redistribute into the meat. If you cut into the chicken and steam comes out, you didn't let it rest long enough.
A whole chicken requires a longer rest period than smaller chicken pieces. In my experience, a whole chicken requires at least a half-hour rest time, and preferably closer to an hour. Smaller pieces should probably rest for 20-40 minutes.
