An Easy Baked Chicken Recipe

While this recipe does require some advance planning on your part, It really is an easy chicken recipe.

An Easy Baked Chicken With An Incredibly Crisp Skin

Easy baked chicken, pan sauce and a simple green salad.

Getting ready to break down the whole chicken.

The chicken after it is broken down. Be sure to put the carcass and trimmings away for stock.

The chicken in the brine. When I am going to use the brine immediately I use ice to bring the temperature of the brine down.

The breast after brining and air drying in the refrigerator.

The chicken breast before I added the pan sauce. This is an incredibly easy chicken breast recipe.

Easy Chicken Breast Recipe

• Yield: 2 servings
• Prep Time: 25 minutes
• Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, cut up - See butchering a chicken
• Half recipe chicken brine
• 1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters peanut oil, to coat
• 1 cup / 8-ounces / 235 milliliters chicken broth or stock
• Juice from one lemon

Method

1. Prepare the brine the night before.
2. The next morning remove the chicken from the packaging. Set aside any giblets. Breakdown the chicken into 2 breasts, 2 wings, 2 thighs, and 2 legs.
3. Add the chicken pieces to the brine. If you like you can add the giblets to the brine as well. Alternatively, if you aren't going to eat them, you can boil them and cut them up and mix them into your dog's food. You can save the liquid broth and add it to your stock pot or use it to make a pan sauce, or sauce your dog's food.
4. Allow the chicken to brine for at least 8-hours and as much as 24-hours.
5. When the chicken is ready remove it from the brine and discard the brine. Rinse the pieces thoroughly under running water. Blot both sides of the chicken pieces with paper towels. Place the breasts on a rack set over a sheet pan and allow to thoroughly air dry in the refrigerator, at least an hour.
   
6. You can wrap up the remaining pieces for a different use, or you can air dry them and sear them in the same manner as I am describing here.

Easy Baked Chicken

1. Preheat oven to 400° F / 205° C.
2. Set a large saute pan over high heat. When the pan is hot add the oil. Immediately add the breasts, skin side down. Reduce heat to medium and allow the breasts to cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Turn over and sear the other side for another 3 to 4 minutes.
3. Turn the breasts back over, so they are skin side down again, and transfer the pan to the oven. Reduce the heat to 350° F / 175° C. Allow the breasts to cook until done through. Depending on how you like your chicken that can take from 8 to 15 minutes. (See Notes.)
4. When the chicken is done remove it to a plate and allow to rest for 5 to 10 minutes, in a warm spot on the back of the stove.
5. Meanwhile, toss out any excess oil in the pan. Set the pan over high heat and add the stock or broth to the pan along with the lemon juice. Allow to cook until it reduces by half. Taste and adjust the seasoning to your preference.
   
6. Serve the chicken with a green salad and divide the pan sauce between the two pieces.

Notes

1. If you boiled off the giblets you can use the liquid from the giblets in place of the stock.
2. If you look at chicken recipes they all say to cook the chicken until the breast registers 165° F / 74° C, in the center. The reason for this is that at 165° F / 74° C salmonella dies almost instantly. However, that is only half the story. The various departments of health recommend this temperature because then everyone will be safe. What they don't say is that there is no magic temperature. Salmonella will die at any temperature above 131° F / 55° C, but at 131 degrees you have to hold it at that temperature for 90 minutes to kill the bacteria. As you increase the temperature the length of time you have to hold it at any given temperature decreases. Once the center of the poultry reaches 165 the bacteria is destroyed.
3. I said once the center of the poultry reaches 165. What you need to know is that once the outside of the poultry reaches 165 it takes about 10-minutes for the center to reach that temperature.
   

Thawing Chicken

1. The two safest methods for thawing chicken are thawing in the refrigerator and thawing in the microwave, on the defrost cycle.
2. The only downside to thawing in the refrigerator is the time it takes. Depending on the amount of chicken and how it was frozen it can take up 3-days to thaw.
3. The downside to thawing in a micrwave is that it tends to cook slightly on the outside while remaining partially frozen on the inside.
4. A third way to thaw chicken is to thaw it under running cold water. While this method works fast, unless your tap water is between 33 and 40 degrees, this method can provide an ideal climate for salmonella to thrive in.
5. A fourth method, and the one I like best is to thaw the chicken in water, or brine, sitting in the refrigerator.

Tags: easy baked chicken, thawing chicken, easy chicken recipe, easy chicken breast recipes