27 Flavor-Packed Ideas for Our Favorite Chicken Recipes Yet (2024)

FAQs

How to make chicken more flavorful? ›

Add a touch of spice to your chicken breast by combining paprika, cinnamon, turmeric, cumin, ginger, garlic and olive oil to create a paste. Then cover your chicken breast with the paste and pat down to secure.

Drizzle a light layer of olive oil onto the chicken if you want the rub to stick better. Olive oil helps the dry rub adhere to the meat so it's less likely to fall off while you're cooking it. Put a coin-sized amount of olive oil on the chicken and spread it evenly across the sides of the chicken.

A wet rub, or marinade, combines herbs and spices with a liquid. The liquid is essential for adding moisture and tenderizing chicken. It can also provide a lot of flavor. To make a marinade for chicken, combine your preferred spices and herbs in a one-to-one ratio, plus one-half part salt.

Yes, you should always season your chicken before cooking when it's raw. You can even do this up to 24 hours before if you have the time. Why? Because leaving the seasoning on your chicken overnight in the fridge will help it start to trap moisture in the chicken, which will make it nice and juicy once cooked.

THIGHS. Arguably the tastiest part of the chicken, thighs are little parcels of tender, juicy meat from the top of the bird's leg.

When chicken is overcooked it becomes dry and loses it's fat and juices which delivers it's flavor. My favorite is chicken thighs, skin on on the grill or under the broiler. Salt and fat are a natural combination for flavor.

Does expensive chicken taste better? ›

After tasting the various chickens 3 or 4 times however, the most expensive chicken was voted to have the nicest most chicken-like flavour, but only by a slight amount that was noticeable after multiple tastings and not obvious. The cheapest chicken tasted somewhat artificially saline and dilute.

Don't Cover the Chicken.

Some chicken thighs in the oven recipes require covering with aluminum foil. This is not one of them. When baking chicken thighs with the skin on, you're trying to achieve crispy chicken thighs in the oven. Therefore, leaving them uncovered ensures a crispy skin that turns perfectly golden.

There are several simple and delicious ways to enhance the flavor and moisture of bland and dry chicken: Marinade: Marinating chicken before cooking can infuse it with flavor and moisture. You can use a mixture of olive oil, herbs, spices, and acid (like lemon juice or vinegar) to create a flavorful marinade.

You see, without a generous sprinkling of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, your chicken is basically destined for blandness. After you've pulled your chicken out of its marinade (or even if you're not using a marinade), always sprinkle all sides of the breast with salt and pepper.

Avoid chicken that is brine-injected or has added water

This may seem like a paradox, because we just said that water is important for juicy chicken, but brine-injected chicken can actually have compromised texture and flavor, because industrial brining helps mask deficiencies in both.