Dry Chicken.

[glitch]

Has anyone any tips for cooking chicken breast from frozen and keeping them moist? Is poaching safe, maybe microwaving? Bear in mind they will be refrigerated from 8pm until 1pm the next day. Cant cook it fresh.

As others have said, don't cook from frozen - just get more organised.

When you go to work in the morning (or whenever) take one of your chicken breasts out of the freezer and pop it on a plate in your fridge. By the time you get home that evening you'll have a perfectly defrosted chicken breast waiting for you to cook.

My personal preference would be to poach the breasts in some chicken stock and then either slice, shred or use the cooked breast whole in your meal. It will be tender, it will taste amazing and a cooked breast ought to keep in a sealed container in the fridge for a couple of days.

And poaching should also allow you to keep as much moisture in the chicken as possible and give you the chance to get flavour into the meat by adding various ingredients to your cooking liquid of choice.

 

[Richie]

After you have cooked the chicken (not from frozen), immediately wrap it in cling film before putting it in the fridge. I do this and it keeps the juices in and makes it really juicy

 

[Mr Jack]

Chicken is really hard to get good texture from when it's been frozen. Even more so if you're actually cooking from frozen rather than letting it thaw. I'm not a big fan of oven cooking chicken breasts; even with high quality fresh chicken it's not easy to get it cooked to perfection -to my mind, you want to grill or fry chicken - but if that's the way you want to do it, the posters before me have a bunch of good suggestions. The other option is steaming; which does tend to produce a moist chicken. I don't tend to do it myself because I find it hard to get good flavours into steamed chicken.

 

[Mr Jack]

when people say cooking from frozen is unsafe. what they really mean. is dumb people undercook the middel and get food poisoning. not that food posioning is common any more.

2/3rds of intensively farmed chicken carry Campylobacter spp. and 100% of free range/organic chicken. Campylobacter is the most common cause of food poisoning in the UK. Food poisoning doesn't occur much anymore because people are more aware and cautious and we have a very well regulated food sector in this country (for now, anyway) not because the risk isn't there.

 

[FrenchTart]

2/3rds of intensively farmed chicken carry Campylobacter spp. and 100% of free range/organic chicken. Campylobacter is the most common cause of food poisoning in the UK. Food poisoning doesn't occur much anymore because people are more aware and cautious and we have a very well regulated food sector in this country (for now, anyway) not because the risk isn't there.

None of this makes what Glaucus said untrue.

 

[Mr Jack]

None of this makes what Glaucus said untrue.

I took his closing note that "not that food posioning is common any more" as dismissing the importance of proper cooking technique. That's wrong; it does matter.

Cooking from frozen is perfectly safe if you're not a numpty though.

 

[alexakasloth]

Try oven cooking it in a bag made of tin foil, this will keep a lot of the steam around the chicken breast and keep it from being so dry.

 

[Pate]

Thread title purposely as dull as the topic

I eat a lot of chicken, primarily for the protein injection for my weight lifting.

I tend to buy £25 worth of breasts from a local butchers and freeze them. I tend to oven cook them the night before ready for my lunch at work. Thing is, they are so terribly dry. I tend to put some spices on to liven them up, though it obviosuly does nothing for the texture.

Has anyone any tips for cooking chicken breast from frozen and keeping them moist? Is poaching safe, maybe microwaving? Bear in mind they will be refrigerated from 8pm until 1pm the next day. Cant cook it fresh.

Protein injection? You a hot female?