Seasoning Chicken Before salting and cooking, you want to pat dry the chicken pieces with a paper towel. The salt, herbs, and spice granules will stay better in place on a slightly damp surface (after pat drying) than on a wet (slimy) one.
Before adding your seasoning, you should first pat your chicken dry with a paper towel. Why? Because this will help your seasoning stay in place.
Pat it down with a clean paper towel to soak up any remaining moisture. "You can even have it air-dry in your refrigerator for a day or two if you want," he says. "That's a trick for my fried chicken.
Pat dry.
Doing this will remove any excess moisture from the chicken, which is what gives you soggy skin. That moisture creates steam in the oven, and the more steam, the less crisp the skin and drier the meat. Keep in mind that it's important not to rinse the chicken first, as this is a food safety issue.
When you rinse raw chicken, you effectively spread bacteria—namely salmonella and campylobacter, the two leading causes of bacterial foodborne illness—all over your sink, and those can infect your sponge and dirty your workspace. Put simply, if you wash raw chicken, you are cross-contaminating your kitchen.
Once the chicken is coated, it should be placed on a rack to allow the pieces to dry, which may take 20 to 30 minutes. Allowing the pieces to dry will provide for more even browning of the chicken. To fry, heat 5 or 6 tablespoons of oil in a heavy skillet over a medium-high burner until the oil is very hot.
A frying pan with short, flared sides will allow more evaporation to occur during cooking than a pan with taller, straight sides. Also, don't crowd the pan: make sure that there is empty space around each piece of chicken to allow as much evaporation as possible.
Lay several cloths loosely over the meat and leave to dry out for 24 hours. Don't cover with cling film as that will prevent it drying out. The air inside a fridge is desiccated (drying it out) and this can be useful for all sorts of things.
Start with a light coat of olive oil (adding too much will allow the seasonings to drip off on the grill) and then graciously season both sides with your selected spice blend. Then, rub those spices in with your hands, ensuring they are well-attached to the exterior of the chicken.
There are two crucial steps to make easy seasoned chicken with a rub. The first is patting it dry so that there is no moisture (water) on the surface of the meat. The second is to coat the meat with a thin layer of olive oil.
Dry rubs work better with time but you can leave the dry rub on chicken for as little as 30 minutes or as long as 24 hours. The flavor will deepen and become more intense the longer you leave it on the chicken so be aware of the seasonings you're using if you're sensitive to spice.
The easiest way to get rid of surface moisture is to simply pat your meat dry with paper towels before you cook it. And this is true for any cooking method, not just pan-searing.
"If you correctly pat the chicken dry prior to cooking, you will get a crispier skin," Sidoti told INSIDER, adding that the goal of drying the chicken is to "reduce the chicken's overall moisture content. If the chicken is not dry, it will release more moisture while cooking."
“You may be compelled to pour it down the drain, but you shouldn't. Put the packaging in your trash instead, and take out the trash as soon as possible.” He explains that those raw juices can contain pathogenic microorganisms that are harmful.
Let the excess liquid evaporate away by bringing the substance to a boil or a simmer until the desired consistency is reached. This method is great for sauces – including a quick pan sauce created after cooking a protein – and gravies that are only marginally looser than desired.
Cooking a soup, stew, or sauce uncovered allows water to evaporate, so if your goal is to reduce a sauce or thicken a soup, skip the lid. The longer you cook your dish, the more water that will evaporate and the thicker the liquid becomes—that means the flavors become more concentrated, too.
Dry chicken is stringy, tough, and unpleasant to eat.
Overcooking might play a role in your chicken's tire-like texture. Leaving chicken in a pan, oven, or grill for just a little too long can suck the moisture right out and leave you with a dry, rubbery bird. Without moisture, the protein fibers in the chicken become elastic.
As you can see, the breast meat will become dry if taken too far above 150°F (65.5°C), while the leg meat needs to reach the temperature range of 160–170°F (71-77°C) in order for the connective tissue to dissolve into mouthwateringly rich gelatin.
Seasoning Chicken
Before salting and cooking, you want to pat dry the chicken pieces with a paper towel. The salt, herbs, and spice granules will stay better in place on a slightly damp surface (after pat drying) than on a wet (slimy) one.
Put an open box of baking soda in your fridge and leave it there. Remove the meat from its wrapping at least an hour to an hour and a half before you plan to put it in the pan. Place the meat on a wire rack in your fridge and let the cold, dry air remove moisture from the surface of the meat. Et voila!
Overall, if you want a juicier, moist whole chicken you may choose to cover the chicken when baking it. To do this, use aluminum foil to make a tent over the top of the whole chicken to keep the moisture that the chicken will release as it cooks trapped inside.