Baked Chicken Breast on the Stove

If it seems weird to you that I had a random egg in my pocket, let me briefly explain. Remember those chickens that I have?? Yea, I usually go hang out with them for a bit as soon as I get home from work. I’m usually still wearing my work coat and I usually simply put the eggs in my pocket for safe keeping while I clean up around the coop and run to get the mail. Sometimes (it’s happened more times than I’m willing to admit) I forget the eggs are in the pocket and find them days later. If I’m lucky, I find them before I leave the house or at least before walking into work. I wasn’t so lucky this time.

Is it at all weird that I’m telling you that story in the same post that I’m explaining how to properly cook chicken? The dynamics of being a daily chicken eater AND having pet chickens is quite, quite strange sometimes.

For entirely too much of my life, I cooked chicken all wrong. I almost always over-cooked it and thought that it would only taste good if it was either covered in loads of salt or loads of cheese (and sometimes often both).

I’ve read a lot about how to bake chicken properly and in my opinion, there’s genuinely only one thing you need to bake savory and juicy chicken: a meat thermometer. THIS ONE is pretty close to the one that we have. They’re truly cheap (you can get one for only ~$10), straightforward to use, and an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY if you want your meat cooked perfectly. Buying this little kitchen tool completely changed my life (is that too dramatic?)!

Chicken needs to be cooked to 165 degrees F. This fact completely changed the way I cooked chicken. Before I would only leave the chicken on the heat until I thought it was done and then I’d cut a piece open to see if all the pink was gone. For me, this resulted in a ton of way over cooked chicken that was dry and bleh.

SO, how do I cook simple and yet still juicy and savory chicken breast??

I almost always bake my chicken. I go for a high temperature with a shorter cooking time because waiting 45 minutes is simply unbearable for me. I check it a couple times throughout the baking process so that I can pull it out as soon as it reaches the right temperature. Sometimes I’ll take the chicken out when it’s at 160 degrees, cover it with foil, and let it sit for a few minutes which will allow it to reach 165 degrees on the counter.

I start by pouring about 2 tablespoons of oil into a baking pan. I then place the chicken in and turn it over a few times to make sure that it’s evenly coated in the oil. It helps if the chicken is all about the same size so that they cook evenly. If they’re drastically different sizes, you can pound the chicken a bit so that they’re all roughly the same thickness.

I then sprinkle it with some simple salt and pepper. Depending on what else I’m cooking, I’ll also add various spices or sauces to the chicken.

Then it goes in the oven to bake for about 18-25 minutes. Again, I’ll check around 19 minutes to see what the temperature is at and decide from there how much longer it needs.

Once done, I let the chicken sit for about 5 minutes before cutting into it at all. One of the things that A regular here about this simple recipe is that so much can easily be added to it. You could sprinkle a little bit of cheese on top, or a tablespoon of marinara or salsa. I do a lot of experimenting so that it doesn’t get boring.