Baked chicken question about skin on or off.

Someone asked me a cooking question about chicken, basically wondering if skinless and boneless chicken breast would bake in the same time as skin-on chicken. She wanted to know oif the breast would get dry as opposed to bone-in thighs for example. She is using a prepared seasonings, with some chicken broth (I don't really know what she'll be using that for) and fresh vegetables.

Well, if you are following a recipe for roasting skin-on thighs, then YES a chicken breast will cook much faster and tend to dry out because there is no skin or sear to lock in the juices. Although roasting a breast is okay, it's not the preferred method for that cut. You really want to have the chicken skin protecting the meat from the intense oven heat. That actually helps keep the meat more moist as well as adding flavor.

What you can do is cook your veggies separately and add the chicken breast in the oven later, but only to finish it off. I strongly suggest you sauté the breast to sear the outside, and then let it finish in the oven. A chicken breast cooked this way will only take 8-10 minutes.

Chicken thighs, because of the dense dark meat, will probably take 3 times as long, which is why you cannot simply substitute a breast in such a recipe. Totally different texture and flavors there. Watch one of my video below here which shows exactly how to handle this process, and you'll see how quick the breast cooks.

When I bake chicken I often do it in the flavorwave oven, and you can even do it from frozen if you have to. Here is a baked chicken recipe I recently did.

Baked chicken breast stuffed with spinach and asiago cheese.
Source: Uploaded by user via MyCrummyApartment on Pinterest

Baked Chicken Chasseur

The Chicken Chasseur recipe I made is basically baked chicken with a basic brown sauce, except hunter's sauce is actually a derivative of brown sauce. This is why it's alway a good thing to know how to make your basic sauces. Check out this blog post and video about how to make a basic brown sauce, then you will be able to make 100s of others by adding other ingredients.

Chicken Chasseur

Baked Chicken

You can bake a whole chicken, breasts of chicken, or even chicken pieces like legs and wings. But what is the difference exactly between baked chicken and roasted chicken? Not much really, as I think those terms are interchangeable because both use dry heat cooking methods.

Now the thing is, if you leave the skin on fresh chicken and then bake it, realistically you don't have to do much at all in terms of flavoring because that skin, and the fat the comes from it really adds a lot of natural flavor. Sure if you like to use BBQ sauce, spicy rubs, seasoning mixes then go for it, but all I am saying is don't underestimate the simplicity of salt and pepper in this case.

Baked Chicken

Now one of the things I like to do when I bake chicken is to do it in the flavorwave oven, which is a counter top convection oven powered by halogen heat. Convection heat makes swirls around the meat giving a more uniform and most would argue moist end product. It also tends to cook anything faster. I like because being in a small apartment the smaller appliance is less likely to spread aroma around the whole place. Just saying.

One of the French cuisine classic baked chicken recipes is Chicken Chasseur. It's also called hunter's sauce and is a derivative of the basic brown sauce. All you really have to do is saute some mushrooms, deglaze with some red wine and then season with a few fresh herbs like parsley and rosemary perhaps. Just before serving the sauce over top the baked chicken, drop a tablespoon of butter into the ready sauce which will add extra flavor, smoothness and a beautiful sheen, the mark of a professional chef.

In the video below I prepare this classic baked chicken recipe using the Flavor Wave Turbo Oven, and I gotta say, it turned out AMAZING!

BAKED CHICKEN RECIPE