Perfect Poached Chicken Breasts

By gvcathy

Ingredients

• 4 (6- to 8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 6 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled

Details

Servings 4
Adapted from cooksillustrated.com

Preparation

Step 1

Cover chicken breasts with plastic wrap and pound thick ends gently with meat pounder until 3/4 inch thick. Whisk 4 quarts water, soy sauce, salt, sugar, and garlic in Dutch oven until salt and sugar are dissolved. Arrange breasts, skinned side up, in steamer basket, making sure not to overlap them. Submerge steamer basket in brine and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Heat pot over medium heat, stirring liquid occasionally to even out hot spots, until water registers 175 degrees, 15 to 20 minutes. Turn off heat, cover pot, remove from burner, and let stand until meat registers 160 degrees, 17 to 22 minutes.

Traditional poaching is a fussy procedure that requires constant monitoring of the cooking liquid and fiddling with the stove to ensure that it stays at a subsimmer—the main hallmark of this method. Our approach is gentler, requires no monitoring, and even adds flavor to mild chicken.

ADD FLAVOR BOOSTERS:

Most flavorings in a cooking liquid can’t migrate very far into meat. We add a few that can: soy sauce, salt, sugar, and garlic.

COOK COVERED, OFF HEAT:

Bringing the cooking liquid to 175 degrees, covering the pot, and cooking the chicken in residual heat is foolproof and hands-off.

We use our well-seasoned poaching liquid not only to impart flavor to the chicken as it cooks but also as a solution in which to brine the meat before turning on the heat. Letting the breasts sit in this liquid for 30 minutes at room temperature has its benefits: the salt (along with the sugar and flavorings) gets a jump-start on seasoning the meat and breaking down proteins to create more-tender chicken. Furthermore, the chicken loses its chill, so it needs less exposure to the heat to come up to temperature.