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Until recently, I had always bought chicken two ways:
- Whole – generally for roasting
- Unique parts – breasts, thighs, etc – but multiple of the same kind – usually for easy dinners.
And then I made fried chicken, and everything changed.
I bought a whole chicken and had the butcher cut it up – as fried chicken naturally needs to be a mix of all the parts.
It was so easy that a few days later, when I was making Smitten Kitchen’s buttermilk roast chicken, I did the same thing. Except that while walking home from the store, I realized it needed to brine overnight. So I rerouted the breasts to that night’s dinner, and left the remaining thighs, legs and wings to marinate (and threw the back in the freezer with other chicken scraps for stock).
Plan was to roast the breasts bone and skin on (more flavor) – but that also means more time (and less healthy) and dammit I was hungry and needed dinner immediately. So I reluctantly cut the breasts off the bone and removed the skin and with smidge of salt, pepper and olive oil, threw them on the grill (pan).
10 minutes later and boneless, skinless chicken breasts that were good. Really good. Good enough that I have since used this trick again this week.
Why was this the best boneless skinless chicken breast of my life? My (unscientific) reasoning is that since the whole chicken was just cut and the then the meat just removed from the skin and bones, that it stayed incredibly moist and fresh. Makes since, sense packaged meats or even those pre-cut in the butcher case are already starting to dry out and lose flavor.
And now I am starting to wonder if half the reason that fried chicken and buttermilk roasted chicken were so damn good is because of this. But that’s good right? It’s all in the ingredients anyway…
So there you have it – better chicken any time – oh, and cheaper too!! Because let’s face it, as boring as they are, occasionally we all need some bonless skinless chicken in our lives.
