The email that arrived in my inbox last month laid out a common problem.
“For me, cooking chicken breasts is tricky because they are less forgiving than cooking dark meat — cook them too long and they are dry and don’t cook them enough and they are rubbery.”
Similar to what I recently wrote about how to not mess up a nice piece of fish, the key to properly cooked chicken breasts is, well, not overcooking them. Cooking meat covers a spectrum of textures, colors, flavors and, of course, temperatures. As you go higher in temperature, the proteins shrink, moisture is pushed out, and the meat turns stiff and dry. All those things are especially unpleasant, and easy to do, with chicken breasts. The margin of error is much lower than with chicken thighs and other dark meat, which can be juicier at temperatures up to 195 degrees.
