Good morning. Chicken breast is notoriously difficult to nail. We’ve all had a dry, stringy chicken breast too many times — Let’s fix that.

RECIPE BREAKDOWN🤯

3 steps for guaranteed juicy chicken breast

1) Thin out or butterfly the breast

• Chicken breasts are bulbous, so if you cook them as is, half of it will dry out before the thick end cooks through.

• The only way to get an even cook (unless you sous-vide) is to thin out the breast into an even thickness. Simply slice it into two thinner pieces, butterfly the breast, or pound it out into an even thickness.

2) Use a thermometer to nail the final temperature.

• Because chicken breast is so lean, overcooking by just a few degrees will dry out the muscle.

• We pull our chicken breast at 155°F/68°C — so long as it rests at that temperature for at least 45 seconds, it has the same bacteria-killing power as (over) cooking the meat to 165°F.

3) Add salt at some point

• Many people claim that dry brining is the secret to juicy chicken breast...but that's really not the case. Thinning out the breast so it cooks uniformly and pulling it at the right temperature has a far greater impact on the juiciness.

• But if you have time, dry brining is still helpful: it evenly seasons the meat and dries off the surface of the chicken, leading to extra browning for a more appealing final product.

Learn more with these videos:

• Chicken breast deep dive

• Grilled chicken remastered

• Cook Well chicken → infinite meals protocol

RECIPE RECCOMENDATIONS🥡

Use chicken breast in these recipes

Prepping chicken breast at the start of the week is one of our favorite strategies because it opens the door to countless, quick meals.

We’ve put together a collection of our favorite recipes that you can make with cooked chicken breast and a few extra ingredients:

FOOD TRENDS 🚀

Miso marinated cod

The hidden techniques behind Nobu’s signature (but misnomer) dish.

Celebrities’ favorite Hollywood restaurant Nobu has always been a trendsetter. It brought Japanese cuisine and sushi dishes to popularity in the 90s LA food scene. More recently, its signature dish — the black miso cod — seems to be replicated on every menu, recipe blog, and social media platform alike.

The dish looks super simple, so why do people freak out about the flavor?

1) Miso isn’t actually the key ingredient. The dish uses a Japanese marinating technique known as kasuzuke, a paste made of sake (and/or mirin) sake leaves, sugar, and salt — which cures the fish.

• Many dupe recipes don’t do their research and miss this step, thinking you can brush a filet with miso, only to fall short of the original version.

• Without the full marinating and dry-brining process, the proteins don’t get a chance to denature, meaning you won’t end up with a tender and succulent fish.

2) The ingredients layer umami, acidity, and sweetness which amplify the flavor of the fish.

• The kasuzuke ingredients are umami-rich, which compound with the glutamate-rich miso paste. When you broil and caramelize these ingredients on the surface of the fish, the browning reactions double down on the savoriness.

• The sake and mirin in the marinade also provide acidity and sweetness, which balance the savory elements. When broiled, the light bitterness from the charred spots creates even more complexity on the palette.

3) Black cod’s flakey but sturdy texture holds onto the marinade but won’t go mushy like other fish.

• The famous dish uses black cod, otherwise known as sablefish which has an incredibly buttery mouthfeel, especially when marinated. It’s a completely different species from the prevalent white cod found at the supermarket and in fish & chips.

If you can’t find black cod at home, lots of people try the technique with salmon, which has a similar texture but a stronger competing flavor.

Our recommendation: instead of following a dupe recipe that shortcuts the original technique, you can follow Chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s actual recipe in his eponymous cookbook.

READER Q&A 🧠

Meal Delivery Services

Answer: Cooking for yourself on a daily basis is hard, and we get why people default to meal delivery services. Meal kits offer convenience, but we argue that they still take time to order and cook. These are the major issues we have with them:

1) High cost

• While you can get introductory pricing deals, the cost per portion size is much more expensive than buying groceries yourself.

2) Packaging waste

• Individually packaged ingredients and shipping materials add up to a lot of extra plastic and cardboard.

3) They reduce effort but don't necessarily save time

• Once you learn how to cook for yourself, we’ve found you can cook meals in the same amount of time or less, especially once you don’t need to follow the step-by-step directions.

That brings us to our biggest issue with meal delivery services:

4) They stifle creativity and true learning.

• It’s like the cooking training wheels never come off, and it’s hard to develop confidence shopping and cooking for yourself without the pre-portioned box of ingredients and instructions.

We’re curious to hear from this audience of home cooks. Do you use meal delivery kits to help with getting food on the table? If you have any opinions on them, you can leave them below too:

Have a culinary question? Reply to send it in for a chance to be featured and get your question answered.

WINNING READER SUBMISSION 🏆

Champion Caesar salad

This week’s dinner winner is Daniel H, who made a chicken Caesar salad with homemade dressing. Learn how to make it here.

Reply with a picture of the best meal you made this week for a chance to be featured in a future email.

EXTRA HELPINGS 🍽️

A read: How to Survive Airport Food

In a minute or less: Pakistani Chicken Karahi

What we’re watching: Tex Mex & Craft Barbecue

Food science: World's Hottest Hot Sauce?

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