Boot Camp: Poaching Chicken

Boot Camp is a back-to-basics series focusing on some classic easy-cooking staples. If you would describe your cooking ability as “my-easy mac-is-on-fire,” then this is a great place to start, and if you’re more of a veteran, we hope you’ll pick up on some new ideas and add advice of your own as a comment. If you’re only interested in how to sous vide heirloom romanesco, you might want to move on.

Cooked chicken is a great thing to have on hand. You can make sandwiches out of it, throw it on a salad, use it for quesadilla filling, or whatever else your hungry heart desires. If you roast chickens on a regular basis (I do not), you’ll already know what I mean. But even if you don’t roast many chickens, you may still like having cooked chicken in the fridge.

In recent years, pre-cooked chicken has become a very popular grocery item, but those bags of chicken chunks can cost an arm and a leg and in the end don’t really taste all that good. But there’s a better way, and it takes only 5-10 minutes: Poaching. After the jump, I’ll tell you all about it.

Poaching is just a fancy word for boiling. Or rather, it’s a more specific word that means boiling meat. Poaching’s cousins – simmering, braising, stewing, and pot roasting, to name a few – are all the same basic technique: Heat water (or other water-based liquid, i.e. not fat) , then cook meat in it. The different terms generally indicate different amounts of liquid (you use much less in braising) or cooking times (stewing is long and slow), but there are no hard and fast rules.

There are two main advantages to poaching chicken. The first is that it’s fast and easy, and the second is that it helps the chicken retain moisture. Restaurants love to use grilled chicken as a salad topping, but the truth is that grilled boneless chicken without any marinade can be dry even in the best of circumstances. Overcook it even a little, and it can taste like shoe leather. In my opinion, poaching is the way to go.

How to Poach Chicken: Start with any boneless cut of chicken. Take a sauce pan large enough to accommodate the chicken and the cooking liquid and place it on the stove. Add your water-based cooking liquid (see below) and bring it to a boil. Add chicken, reduce heat, and simmer for 2-5 minutes, depending on thickness of the cut. Fin.

In my experience, poaching is a pretty forgiving enterprise, but here are a few tips to put you on the right track:

1. You can poach in water alone and achieve good results, but I think poaching in stock is much better. I think the chicken stays moister.  Canned stock is fine, and I actually use half stock and half water.
2. There’s no magic ratio of liquid to meat. You want to be sure you have enough to cover the meat completely, but don’t go crazy. You’re not making spaghetti.
3. I wouldn’t recommend using chicken that’s cut very thick. This can cause the outside to overcook and become dry before the inside is cooked through. If you buy jumbo boneless breasts, I’d cut them into strips before poaching.
4. Finally, let the chicken cool in the poaching liquid. Chicken absorbs liquids best at temperatures below where you would normally cook it. Allowing the chicken to cool in the liquid will allow it to reabsorb some of the moisture it lost in the cooking process.

Once the chicken is cooled, you can just pull it apart with your fingers. Toss it in a tupperware or ziploc and store it in the fridge. It should be good for a week or so, but I’d be surprised if it doesn’t disappear well before that.