What chicken cut is best for stir-fry?

Best Chicken for Chicken Stir Fry Chicken breasts and chicken thighs both work well for stir fries. Just make sure the pieces are relatively small and thin. Plus, they should be about the same size so the chicken cooks evenly.

How to slice chicken breast for Chinese food?

It is generally recommended to cut the chicken breast against the grain for stir fry. This helps to break down the muscle fibers and make the chicken more tender. You can identify the grain of the chicken by the direction of the muscle fibers – simply cut perpendicular to these fibers.

How do you keep chicken breast moist in a stir-fry?

Homecook method (easy and fast) – This method uses a small amount of baking soda, starch, and oil. The baking soda helps tenderize the chicken breast, the oil seals the moisture to keep the chicken tender, and the starch forms a thin crisp crust when stir-frying in a hot wok.

How to thin a chicken breast?

The Easiest Way to Thin Chicken Breasts Slice a chicken breast down the middle. Holding one hand flat over the top of the chicken breast, make sure your hand and fingers are out of the way of the knife. Slowly slice with a sharp knife from the thicker side of the chicken breast horizontally to the thinner side.

Is it better to pound or slice chicken breast?

Still, there are even more benefits for propounding your chicken breast. Not only do flatter chicken breasts cook faster, but they are also a little bit easier to cut and therefore, somewhat easier to eat too. Between the cooking and the eating, overall, a flatter chicken breast is just much easier to deal with.

What is the secret ingredient in stir-fry?

Ketchup Is The Secret Ingredient For A Top-Notch Stir Fry.

Why is Chinese stir-fry chicken so tender?

In Chinese cooking, proteins like beef, pork or chicken are velveted first before stir-frying them. There are several ways to velvet, but at its most basic level, it involves marinating meat with at least one ingredient that will make it alkaline. This is what tenderizes the meat, especially cheaper, tougher cuts.

How do Chinese food restaurants make their chicken so tender?

How do Chinese Restaurants tenderise chicken? marinating in a cornstarch/cornflour sludge then deep frying or blanching in water before proceeding to cook in the stir fry. egg whites – sometimes the above method is also done using egg whites. chemical tenderiser. simple baking soda / bi carbonate method. Feb 23, 2019

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries (2024)

Even if you have the very best chef's knife and that knife is carefully sharpened and honed after each use, chicken can still be a bit slippery to slice. As with bacon or pancetta—or any other meat, really—throwing it on a plate and placing it in the freezer for about 15 minutes will help it firm up and make it easier to slice precisely.

Muscle Grain Matters

All muscle matter has a grain to it. The muscle fibers align in the direction that they contract. The orientation of your knife to this grain will determine the length of the muscle fibers in an individual slice of meat, which in turn will have a profound effect on how tender or tough that meat is.

Chicken breast is a little different than most cuts of meat you'll encounter since the grain isn't uniform across the entire chicken breast half. Here's a rough diagram of the orientation of the grain on a boneless, skinless chicken breast:

Chicken is also a little different from other meats in that you want to slice not quite 100 percent against the grain, because it can end up almost too tender if you do. But you still want to cut at a sharp bias against it.

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

Hold the chicken breast with your non-knife hand, curling your fingertips under your knuckles (so you don't slice them off!), and slice the chicken with long, even strokes into slices about 1/4-inch thick.

How to Julienne Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

If you want slivers of chicken breast to toss into a stir-fry, you cut the chicken breast as you would for slices, but then you take those same slices, stack a few at a time, and slice them lengthwise.

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries (3)

Only stack as many slices on top of each other as you feel comfortable slicing. The goal is to produce relatively uniform matchstick-lengths of chicken breast.

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries (4)

How to Dice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

If you're making a recipe that calls for diced chicken breast, as in my Sichuan kung pao chicken, you'll want to start by slicing the chicken into wider strips.

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries (5)

Then cut each of those wider strips crosswise into cubes. If you want to cut up smaller cubes, take each of the wider strips and slice it in half lengthwise, then cut the resulting strips crosswise.

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries (6)

The chicken is now ready to cook in any number of Chinese recipes, whether they involve velveting (coating with egg white and corn starch, like in this stir-fried velvet chicken with snap peas and lemon-ginger sauce), simple marinating, like in this easy stir-fried chicken with ginger and scallions, or this Kung Pao chicken, or this kimchi chicken and cabbage stir-fry, or just cooked as-is, like in this chicken red curry stir-fry with green beans.

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries (2024)

Muscle Grain Matters

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

How to Julienne Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

How to Dice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

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April 2014

FAQs

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries? ›