You know which ingredient I really struggle with as a recipe developer? Chicken. Every
time I publish a chicken dish, it seems bullet proof to me, and it always surprises me how
polarizing the feedback is from people who try these recipes. For some, they work flawlessly
and for others they are a complete flop.
Some of it is experience. I’ve noticed that 90% of home cooks don’t know how to use
a thermometer correctly. They don’t realize that the spot they stuck it into is not the
coolest spot and the readings they are getting are completely useless. I already addressed
that in a video a couple of years ago, so if you are having doneness problems, that’s
the one to watch.
But the problem we are talking about today is something that plagues people regardless
of their cooking experience. Last year I posted a video on my new favorite way to cook chicken
thighs. They are crispy, juicy, and easy to make, or so I thought until some of you reported
chicken sticking to the foil and the skin never getting crispy. Today we are going to
solve these problems. If you have absolutely no interest in cooking chicken, you might
still learn an awful lot about how to use your oven and your cookware more productively.
The problem with brown and crispy skin is that the procedure to get it will be vastly
different depending on what equipment and what chicken you use and no matter what I
write in a recipe you’ll need to do some troubleshooting. The people who happen to
have the same chicken and equipment as I do, nail it on the first try. That’s just luck,
not skill. The people whose equipment and chicken are different will likely need to
make the dish several times to figure out which way to tweak different variables. It’s
really not something you can anticipate, so don’t beat yourself up if the first time
is a flop.
The biggest trouble I’ve heard reported about this chicken thigh recipe is that the
chicken sticks to the foil. I’ve seen people find all sorts of creative solutions like
buying non-stick foil or spraying the foil with non-stick spray. These are all reasonable
solutions, but they don't address the root cause of the sticking problem. The reason
the chicken stuck is because it wasn't brown enough. So even if you use a non-stick surface
and flip it with no problems, the resulting dish will not be tasty. So how do we make
sure we brown the heck out of this chicken? There are 3 variables that affect browning:
the output of the oven, the type of cookware, and the dryness of the chicken. Think of them
as 3 knobs that you can play with until you get the results you want.
Let’s start with the oven -- the most unpredictable tool in your kitchen. The problem with ovens
is that they fool you into having a sense of security about their precision because
they have a knob with numbers. That’s where most people say, aha -- I know where you are
going here Helen, I should get an oven thermometer, right?
Well… You can certainly get an oven thermometer, but please don’t expect it to improve your
cooking by much. The problem with thermometers is that you can only place them into 1 spot.
There are many many different temperatures inside your oven and they change over time.
Your oven thinks it’s preheated and shuts off when the thermostat in the back of the
oven reaches the temperature you set on the knob (that’s assuming the thermostat is
accurate). Most of your oven might not have reached this temperature yet. So it’s very
typical for the ovens to be off but not by the same amount through time. Your oven might
be 25 degrees lower than expected during the first 30 minutes, then it might be just what
the knob says, and then it might be even higher than what the knob says. Another problem is
that most gas ovens run hotter on the bottom and cooler on the top, while most electric
ovens are more even. If I am roasting vegetables or chicken, I want that boost of heat, so
a gas oven is great, but if I am baking pastries, a gas oven is a nightmare because my bottom
is browning faster than the top.
If your head is starting to hurt, don’t worry. I won’t have you map your oven to
find it’s hot and cool spots over time and give me a 3 dimensional graph. All you have
to do is make a recipe a couple of times until you find what works for you. If you didn’t
get enough browning on those chicken thighs, here are the oven adjustments you can make.
Turn on your convection fan. If you have a convection fan, it will move the hot air around
giving you much better and faster browning. If you don’t have a convection fan, crank
up the heat and preheat the oven longer. Don’t just rely on the “preheating” light to
turn off. Wait at least 30 minutes before putting the chicken in.
And of course, you can do both, turn on the fan and crank up the heat. I would also suggest
preheating your baking sheet longer.
The next knob that we can play with is the cookware. Although the top of the chicken
is cooked with the air. The skin, which is the most important part, is cooked with the
pan. Different materials conduct heat differently. You might have the same exact settings in
your oven and produce completely different results just by changing the pan. Look at
this eye opening picture that I got from my wonderful friend, Mary Alice. Hi Mary Alice!
Man, this picture is gold. These chicken thighs were cooked in the same oven, at the same
time. The pan on the left achieved this deep browning in 15 minutes and the pan on the
right couldn’t get there even after 20 minutes.
Yes, you heard that right, the more brown chicken was in the pan for less time. What
is this magical pan that browns so well? Mary Alice said it’s William and Sonoma brownie
pan. The pan on the right is a standard quarter sheet. In case you are wondering what pan
I use for this dish? It’s the one on the right, the standard quarter sheet. But I have
a gas oven that’s kind of light a fire breathing dragon and Mary Alice has electric. It’s
possible that if I tried Mary Alice’s brownie pan in my oven, I would need a much lower
temperature. The moral of this story is not that you should buy a William and Sonoma brownie
pan. But if you know that some pan in your kitchen is a champion of browning, like a
well seasoned cast iron skillet, you might want to give it a shot if you need better
browning. Just keep in mind that a cast iron pan is thicker than the cookie sheet I use,
and needs a much longer preheat. I’d put it into the oven as soon as you turn it on
and give it at least 20 minutes to preheat, which your oven will likely need in spite
of what the little light says.
If all else fails, you can give your chicken an initial browning boost by starting it on
the stove top. The only downside is that you can no longer use the foil, so you’ll have
to wash the pan, but it’s not a biggie. Set a good stainless steel skillet oven high
heat with a tiny bit of oil (something with a high smoke point). When the pan is nice
and hot. Place the chicken thighs into it skin side down and cook them on the stove
top for 1 minutes before placing the skillet in the oven. This initial boost will give
you an easy release when it’s time to flip the chicken, but continuing the dish in the
oven will give you slower, tastier, and more complex browning.
The last knob that you can adjust is the moisture in the chicken. Water can’t get above 212F
and the browning doesn’t start until 330F, so the less water we have to evaporate, the
faster the chicken will brown. The chicken I use is air-chilled. It’s Bell & Evans
brand that is available almost everywhere in Boston, but I don’t know if it’s easily
available everywhere. I know in the video I told you that I didn’t even dry these
thighs, while I normally make a big deal out of drying all my proteins. Well, I was wrong.
Not drying might be too risky for some people. If your chicken was damper than mine, it would
brown way slower. If it wasn’t air chilled, it would brown slower too. Not everyone has
access to air-chilled poultry, but everyone has access to paper towels, so use them. Dry
that chicken just in case. You might also want to be careful with placing too many pieces
on a baking sheet. If you are starting in a skillet on the stove top, that’s such
a boost of heat that you could get away with the chicken pieces being pretty close to each
other. But if you are going straight into the oven on a cookie sheet, I’d space the
pieces out to make sure the moisture is evaporating as quickly as possible.
Now that I think about it, there is one more knob you can play with here, which is time.
Say the recipe says to flip your chicken at around 15 minutes. Well, if it’s not brown
enough, I would crank up the heat of my oven, turn on the convection fan if you have one
and give it another 5 minutes. Mary Alice said she was worried about overcooking it.
That’s a great concern, but there is a reason why we are using thighs for this cooking method
and not breasts. The breasts have a tiny window of opportunity for doneness (an extra minute
can make or break them), but the thighs are pretty good at 160, great at 170, 180, and
even 190, and still perfectly edible at 200. You also don’t need to factor in the residual
heat with thighs (in other words the temperature going up during rest). The part that goes
up during rest is the middle and what’s in the middle of the thigh? It’s the bone.
So go for the browning you want and don’t worry about doneness too much. I really can’t
think of any other protein that I can say that about.
Now, what if you are having the opposite problem. Your oven burns everything on the bottom.
For savory foods, you could just lower the temperature or turn off the convection fan.
But for pastries and breads, dropping the temperature sometimes results in a pale top,
which is not desirable. One solution I found is to put a second baking sheet underneath.
This slows down the browning on the bottom without affecting the top.
Once you fix the browning problem, chances are the sticking problem will go away on its
own. But in case that stubborn chicken is still sticking, here are 2 more things to
consider: your flipping methodology and the type of foil you are using. When you are flipping
sticky things, don’t just yank a piece straight up. Unstick one corner and then pull up on
it very slowly. Slower than I did in the video. Mine wasn’t stuck, so I didn’t need to
go that slow. Oh, and about that foil. I use generic brand foil from target. It says on
it that it’s comparable to Reynolds. It’s not heavy duty and it’s not officially non-stick,
but it’s pretty sturdy. If your foil rips as easily as tissues, you might want to consider
using parchment paper or sturdier foil or non-stick foil, or spraying it with non-stick
spray. But I’d like to suggest that you don’t use these kinds of bandaid solutions
until you solve the browning problem.
Here are more thought provoking videos for you to check out and if you are ever in the
Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.