How to Cook Chicken
Chicken is a versatile food. It can be cooked by frying, stewed, sautéed, baked, grilled, or just plain boiled. Here are important tips on how to cook chicken.
Ingredients Needed
Generally, when cooking chicken, here are the usual ingredients needed, especially when sautéing with sauce, boiling with stew, or stuffing and grilling: Dressed chicken, crushed garlic, diced onions, sliced tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste. If these spices are present, how to cook chicken is no problem at all.
Utensils Needed
These are the utensils needed: Chopping board, a sharp knife, and a cooking pot (a crock pot is perfect). A crock pot is good for frying, baking, boiling, or grilling.
First Procedure
How to cook chicken really begins with buying chicken from the market or grocery. Some chicken recipes call for a whole unchopped chicken, like roasting or baking. Most recipes call for chopped chicken. So, it largely depends on one’s preferences. Don’t buy whole, unchopped chicken when the recipe requires chopped chicken pieces. This may sound obvious, but it is a mistake often committed.
Prepare the ingredients
During cooking time, make sure the chicken is not frozen. Frozen meat is difficult to slice and prepare. Soak frozen chicken in water hours before cooking time. It is a basic in how to cook chicken. While soaking frozen chicken in water, or after washing and slicing up chicken (if one needs smaller pieces) using the knife and chopping board, sauté the crushed garlic, diced onions, and sliced tomatoes in cooking oil in the cooking pot until tomato is crushed.
Tenderizing and Adding Flavor
After sautéing the spices, add enough water. The amount of water depends on what consistency one prefers. For stews, add 3 cups water to a whole chicken. If half a chicken is preferred, add one and a half cups water. For other recipes, like sautéing, a cup of water will be fine to produce sauce. Tenderizing is a must in how to cook chicken. So boiling it in water is needed even if it is to be fried.
Stewed, Sauced, or Fried
Boiling chicken with the spices also helps seal in the flavors. After boiling for some 20 to 30 minutes, take it out of the pot and fry in cooking oil. Or, if the recipe calls for stewed chicken, let it remain in the pot and add salt and pepper to taste. Vegetables may also be added, like potatoes and cabbages.
On how to cook chicken with sauce, take out most of the water after boiling and add cooking oil and boil until sauce appears.
