If you love food with the kind of passion that drives you to spend all morning at the farmers’ market to spend all afternoon cooking a three-course dinner, then you probably don’t love a boneless, skinless chicken breast.
It’s a reality to accept, and perhaps even appreciate, the virtue of lean protein, a pre-Reformation indulgence that serves as penance for the dinner sins of pork belly and bone marrow.
I used to feel that way. But the dish, this smoky beauty of a recipe – with its juicy swirl of lemon and olive oil and its fragrant charred garlic and parsley – is mouthwatering in the primal way of fried drumsticks and saucy wings. The leanness of the breast, compared with the richness of increasingly popular thighs, gives the marinated meat a crystalline brightness, like a blue summer sky after a thunderstorm.
Culinary professionals often dismiss that pure flavour as boring, though. (Have you seen the chef Tom Colicchio’s chicken breast rants on “Top Chef”?)
But Dennis Mao prefers it. He’s the founder and owner of Jidori Chicken, which sells bespoke birds to fine-dining restaurants.
“I thoroughly enjoy the breast,” he said. “If it’s cooked properly, it’s really good. It has a light chicken flavour and is very clean.
This is true of the ones he raises because they’re small, in the four- to eight-ounce range. Commercially available breasts are much larger, which can make that meat bland. It isn’t only the lack of fat but also the monotony of texture, with an inch or more of uniform thready strands that are prone to cottony dryness since the meat takes so long to cook through.
But it’s not just size that matters. Mr Mao explained that no one factor determines a bird’s quality, such as “heritage breed” or “free-range”, but rather a combination of how the chicken is fed, raised, handled, processed and shipped. For regular supermarket shoppers, he advises looking for the freshest meat, since there’s “a huge taste difference with that subtle shift.”
The ideal option is “something slaughtered recently,” but labels don’t reveal that detail. So look for the latest “use before” and “sell by” dates if they’re listed, as well as the terms “fresh” or “keep refrigerated,” which indicate that the chicken hasn’t been frozen, since freezing deteriorates its quality.
If you can find and afford high-end A-cup breasts, choose them. For the rest of us, here’s how to make supermarket chicken breasts the star of summer:
1. Flatten the meat into thinner planks
Often, butterflying the breast by slicing it in half leaves you with a thick slab of uniform meat striations that get boring after the second bite. Instead, cut the breast to a third of its original height by slicing two shutters: Start with a deep slit from the centre of the fat rounded top down to the pointy end without cutting all the way through.
Then, position the knife at the halfway point of one cut side and slice to open up that side without piercing through. Repeat on the other side and you end up with two shutters that open out from the centre.
Once unfurled, the thinner breast can be smacked into an even layer. (I use my bare palm, but a meat mallet or skillet works too.)
The breast won’t end up like a heart-shaped cutlet or even symmetrical like a Rorschach splotch, but that’s why it’ll be as irresistible as steak.
The fibres are now not only shortened, but they also run in different directions, so each bite offers some variety in chew.
2. Marinate quickly
Marinades bolster flavour, but mainly on the meat’s surface; that’s another reason this chicken breast benefits from being so svelte. Plus, it needs only 15 to 30 minutes in the marinade — the time it takes to heat a grill.
Olive oil does a lot of work here, carrying the aromas of the garlic, lemon zest and pepper and ensuring that the meat tastes rich and browns well. The herbs, which char nicely, bring freshness; and the salt, along with the acid in the lemon juice, keeps the chicken tender and moist.
3. Get your grill hotter than usual
Many summers ago, the chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten told me that most home cooks don’t get their grills hot enough to develop deep smokiness.
A blazing fire will leave a whole breast burnt on the outside and raw on the inside, but it will give these extra-thin cutlets a rich char that encases their juicy centres.
The heat is right when you can hold your hand five inches above the grate for three to five seconds. On a gas grill, that tends to be on the higher side of medium-high, and with charcoal, the lumps or briquettes should be ashed over and glowing red-bright beneath the grey-white surface. Be sure to cover a gas grill while cooking to maintain that intensity of heat too.
4. Pull the meat off the grill earlier
If the chicken breast isn’t cooked through, you can always put it back on the grate, but you can’t fix a dry, overcooked one.
These slender planks are done in about five minutes and should be just opaque throughout with the faintest hint of pink, like a blush that fades after your crush walks away.
To check one, move it to a plate, stick a paring knife in the centre and pull the blade back so you can see the meat from top to bottom.
If the breast needs a little more time, put it back on the grill and peek again in under a minute.
Hot off the grill or even cold over the coming days, this dish bursts with the richness and zing that makes even chicken breast doubters believe.
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