Chicken with no skin and still delicious


I’ve been thinking about buying a chicken to roast, and am completely exhausted by all the conditions that my poultry has to meet before I can, with a clean conscience, throw it first into my shopping basket and then into my oven.

I have to worry about what my chicken ate while it was alive, the conditions that it lived in, the drugs that it took, the manner in which it was killed and the packaging that is used to display it at the store.

Happily, here in the Northwest Corner, it is fairly easy to find poultry products that have been precertified and are eco-friendly. And two of the most upstanding brands also produce the tastiest meals. They are Bell and Evans, which is sold at LaBonne’s in Salisbury and other stores; and Murray’s Chicken, which is sold at Freshtown in Amenia and other stores.

If you want plentiful details on why you should feed these chickens to your friends and loved ones, you can visit their Web sites at murrayschicken.com and bellandevans.com. You can also visit the Certified Humane Web site (certifiedhumane.com), which gives you a long list of conditions that chicken producers have to meet before they earn the seal of approval.

I like to eat chicken in the unhealthiest form available: roasted, with all the skin on and lots of salt. Now, really, even a roasted chicken is relatively healthy. It’s certainly got less fat than bacon. It certainly has fewer carbohydrates than, well, anything since it doesn’t have any carbs at all. It is loaded with protein. It is relatively low fat, for meat; if you cook it with the skin off, it’s very low fat. According to the Web site at eatchicken.com (which, obviously, has a bias), chicken has less saturated fat even than salmon. Of course, salmon is loaded with super-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, so don’t scratch it off your shopping list. In fact, if there’s any single message this column tries to convey, it’s that the healthiest way to eat is to try and eat a balance of all the healthy, natural foods you can find.

One of the most wonderful things about roast chicken is that it is the perfect canvas on which you can paint with many ultra-nutritious vegetables. Onions and garlic, for example, are meltingly soft and wonderful to eat when they have been stuffed in the cavity or under the skin of a whole chicken or chicken breast. Carrots, parsnips, turnips and other root vegetables also take on a mellow sweetness when they’ve been roasted alongside chicken.

Of course, part of what makes them so much more wonderful is all that chicken fat.

And of course, one of the shortcomings of a skinless chicken breast is that it often tastes dry and dull. I’ve never been very good at marinating things ahead of time. But I’ve found what seems to be a foolproof, low-fat method for cooking boneless skinless chicken breasts on the stovetop. I slice up an onion into rings that are about a quarter-inch thick; I do the same with a lemon (be sure to rinse it well to get any chemicals off the skin). I lay my onions and lemons in a large saute pan (usually I use iron or copper, but I have also found with this method that, because the raw chicken really never touches the surface of the pan, clean up is pretty easy no matter what kind of pan you use). I sprinkle in some chopped garlic, and I drizzle about a tablespoon of olive oil into the pan. I heat it up at low heat, letting the onions, lemon and garlic begin to soften. Then I gently lay my (already salted-and-peppered) chicken breasts on top of the onions and lemons.

It’s worth the extra effort, by the way, to slice the breasts in half so they are about an inch thick at most. When they’re 3 inches thick, as they often are when you bring them home from the store, it’s almost impossible not to overcook them.

I can’t tell you how high the flame has to be under your pan. I usually go for medium heat and have never had any kind of post-prandial illnesses; if you’re very concerned about the safest temperature for cooking raw chicken, you can contact the Torrington Area Health District, or you could look online.

At any rate, at whatever level of heat, let the chicken cook until you just begin to see white at the edges, then flip it over. I usually scoop up the lemon and onion slices at this point and put them on top of the meat, so they don’t burn. Often, I will flip the breasts over once or twice more, and the lemons and onions can then go back to the heat.

This method not only gives you tender and moist skinless chicken; it should also leave you with a bit of nice lemon-onion juice in the pan.

 

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