6 mistakes to avoid when cooking chicken!

published on 15 February, 2019 at 13:00

Cooking chicken perfectly in quite easy, all you need to do is follow a few simple rules and avoid making some common mistakes.

Here are a few of the most common mistakes made when preparing chicken:

1)Rinsing it under running water
Washing chicken in the kitchen sink is a frequent mistake people make. By doing this it is believed that the chicken is being cleaned of all the bacteria, in reality, the bacteria are just being spread to other things. The only way to eliminate all the germs found on the chicken is to blot the surface and then cook it for at least 20 minutes.

2) Cooking it without marinating it first
Marinating allows us to add so much flavor to the meat, it also helps it stay moist when it is being cooked. To avoid cooking up a dry and tough piece of chicken, all you need to do is keep the chicken in some milk or oil and seasonings to marinate for at least one hour.

3) Defrosting it the wrong way
Another mistake is taking a frozen piece of chicken and cooking it still frozen, or leaving it at room temperature.
The best way to defrost meat is to move it from the freezer to the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, then leaving it at room temperature for about 30 minutes before cooking it.

4) Cooking it without the skin
The skin helps the chicken stay moist as it cooks allowing us to prepare a tasty and tender piece of meat. To keep it lighter, all you have to do is remove the skin after cooking.

5) Freezing the chicken incorrectly
A quick and easy tip to defrost only the quantity of chicken you need to prepare your meal is to slice the chicken and alternate each slice with a piece of parchment paper before freezing it. This way, you won’t have to defrost more than what you need.

6) Add seasoning to the chicken while cooking it
This makes it hard for the meat to get much flavor and a lot of the seasoning gets lost in the pan. Seasoning the chicken before placing it in the pan is your best bet. Massage the seasoning into the meat so that it absorbs all the flavor of the spices being used.