How to Boil a Chicken Before Baking

Boiling a chicken before baking produces broth for additional meals.

As a basic entree, cooked chicken tastes best after it's either been baked or boiled but generally not after doing both. You could wind up with tasteless, chewy meat. There are certain times when using both cooking techniques on a piece of poultry makes sense. If you want to make broth for soups before baking or reduce fat content in the meat, making boiled-baked chicken is a good idea and provides the makings for at least a couple of meals.

Things You'll Need

• Stock pot
• Whole (3 1/2 to 4 lb.) chicken
• Salt
• Sliced carrots
• Chopped onion
• 2 chopped celery stalks
• Parsley flakes
• Casserole dish
• Sealable storage containers
• Cooking shears
• Bread crumbs
• 1 tsp. oregano
• 1 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
• 3 tbsp. olive oil
• Ground pepper
• Meat thermometer

Instructions

1. Fill your stock pot with water, and bring it to a boil. Rinse the chicken and remove the giblets. Place the whole chicken, with its wing tips placed behind its back, into the water, cover and cook for 10 minutes. Remove any foam then add vegetables and seasoning.

2. Let the chicken boil for approximately 45 minutes. Remove the chicken from the boiling water, and place it on a cutting surface. Strain the broth, and let it cool before pouring it into re-sealable storage containers that can be frozen or refrigerated. Use the broth to make soups or casseroles for another meal.

3. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Trim the boiled chicken into pieces with shears. Mix together bread crumbs, cheese, olive oil, pepper and oregano, and coat the chicken pieces with the crumb mixture. Place the chicken pieces in an oiled, rectangular casserole dish and put in the oven for 30 minutes.

4. Insert a meat thermometer into the innermost portion of the thigh and the thickest part of the breast. Remove the chicken from the oven when its temperature reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tips & Warnings

• The chicken is ready to remove from the boiling water whenever its juices run clear when poked with a fork.

References

• Roasted boiled chicken recipe
• USDA Poultry Preparation Fact Sheet