How to Season Chicken: 9 Chicken Recipes With Seasonings

Seasonings help tenderize chicken and enhance its flavor. Salt and pepper are essential seasonings for chicken, but you can use several combinations of spices, herbs, and acids (such as vinegars, alcohols, and citrus juices) to add texture and flavor to chicken dishes. Additionally, cooking chicken with fats, like olive oil and butter, can help the chicken cook evenly while adding flavor at the sane time.

Whether you rub, brine, baste, or marinate chicken, use the following seasonings to tenderize the meat and add flavor. The best chicken seasonings include:

• Acids: Lemon juice, vinegar, yogurt, and other acids https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-cook-with-the-cajun-holy-trinityhelp tenderize and penetrate the meat with flavor. Select an acid that will pair well with the flavors of the meal.
• Fats: Rubbing chicken with olive oil or butter provides moisture, adds flavor, and supports heat transfer when cooking.
• Herbs: Add a depth of flavor to the chicken with dried herbs. Italian seasoning, a mix of rosemary, oregano, thyme, basil, and dried parsley, pairs well with chicken.
• Marinades: Tenderize the meat with a marinade, which will also infuse the chicken with flavor before you cook it. A chicken marinade traditionally consists of a balance of fat (like oil), aan cid (like vinegar), and seasonings (like spices, herbs, and condiments). Alternatively, you can prepare a marinade with white sugar or brown sugar, which will caramelize and add sweetness.
• Salt: Season the chicken with sea salt, kosher salt, or flavored salts, which will better enable the chicken to absorb flavors while cooking.
• Spices: Garlic powder, black pepper, onion powder, and cumin add savoriness and flavor to the chicken. Spices like paprika, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and Cajun seasoning add heat and smokiness to the chicken.

When seasoning chicken, consider the following tips:

1. 1. Let marinades sit. To make the most flavorful chicken, let the chicken marinate for at least thirty minutes and at most twenty-four hours before grilling or baking the chicken.
2. 2. Measure your ingredients. Use a tablespoon of seasoning for every pound of chicken. Mix the seasonings in a small bowl before applying them to the chicken.
3. 3. Pat the chicken dry. If using a dry rub, pat the chicken dry with paper towels before seasoning to ensure the dry rub properly sticks to the meat. Rubbing olive oil or butter onto the dry chicken first can also help seasonings stick.
4. 4. Season the chicken skin. When cooking chicken with the skin on, rub some seasoning on top of the skin to flavor it and help make it crispy, and then underneath the skin to flavor the meat.
5. 5. Toast your ground spices for enhanced flavor. Chef Wolfgang Puck shares a pro tip about getting more from your seasonings, a practice he employs in his award-winning restaurants’ kitchens: “If you can, toast your peppercorns a little bit in the oven to release a little bit of the oil, and they will be even more fragrant. We do that with all of our spices. If it's cumin, coriander seed: We toast them, then they have more flavor because they release their oil.”
6. 6. Use a seasoning mix. Combining spices to create a premade spice blend or dry rub can expedite the cooking process and be an excellent way to experiment with flavor combinations. You can store spice blends in an airtight container for future use.

From roasting a whole chicken to searing chicken thighs, there are several ways to season and prepare cuts of chicken. Consider making one of the chicken recipes below featuring different homemade chicken seasoning mixes:

1. 1. Baked chicken breast: This simple baked chicken recipe involves seasoning boneless skinless chicken breasts in a combination of paprika, brown sugar, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Bake it in a baking dish, and serve the juicy chicken breasts with veggies or mashed potatoes.
2. 2. BBQ chicken rub: A homemade spice rub, a BBQ rub consists of salt, sugar, and spices that you apply to the chicken before smoking or grilling it. This rub for barbecue chicken includes brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, black pepper, smoked paprika, kosher salt, cayenne pepper, and cumin. Serve homemade BBQ-rubbed chicken with classic barbecue side dishes like potato salad, coleslaw, cornbread, and mashed potatoes.
3. 3. Chicken paillard: A French term, paillard refers to a boneless piece of meat that you have pounded thin or butterflied until it is an even thickness. You can use a rolling pin or meat mallet to pound the thickest parts of a boneless skinless chicken breast on a cutting board, which creates tender chicken breasts. This chicken paillard recipe by Chef Thomas Keller makes for an easy chicken dinner since it calls for only oil and kosher salt and requires you to sear the chicken quickly on the stovetop.
4. 4. Chicken souvlaki: This Greek dish of marinated meat on skewers requires you to cook chicken breasts flavored with a marinade of lemon juice, garlic, and herbs before grilling. In Greece, chicken souvlaki is typically a main course that comes with rice and tzatziki. In the United States, it’s often a pita bread sandwich similar to the gyro or shawarma.
5. 5. Chicken tacos: Make your own taco seasoning by blending ground cumin, paprika, black pepper, garlic powder, chipotle chile powder, ancho chile powder, dried Mexican oregano, and onion powder. Add the chicken seasoning blend to boneless skinless chicken breasts. Sear the chicken on the stovetop, then slice it and add it to warm tortillas. Serve your chicken tacos with toppings like cilantro, avocado, lime wedges, and salsa.
6. 6. Fried chicken: Seasoning is the best way to create a flavorful fried chicken. In Chef Thomas Keller’s fried chicken recipe, you brine the chicken with lemons, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, honey, garlic, peppercorns, kosher salt, and water. Then dredge the chicken through a mix of flour, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, kosher salt, and ground black pepper. You can fry the chicken in oil or an air fryer.
7. 7. Jerk chicken tacos: Jerk sauce is a mixture of chiles, spices, garlic, sugar, and soy sauce blended until smooth. Jerk chicken tacos feature grilled, jerk-spiced chicken in a corn tortilla. Cooks marinate the meat, grill it until smoky and juicy, then serve it in warm tortillas. Dress Jamaican jerk chicken tacos simply with diced radishes, onions, and pineapple. Popular finishes include a cilantro sprinkle and a fresh lime juice squeeze.
8. 8. Roast chicken: Chef Thomas Keller’s roast chicken recipe includes instructions for marinating the chicken in a mix of lemons, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, honey, garlic, peppercorns, kosher salt, and water. You could also use the marinade to make an oven-baked chicken breast recipe.
9. 9. Tandoori chicken: This Indian grilled chicken dish uses skinless chicken breasts or thighs marinated in yogurt and spices, including garam masala, chili powder, ginger, and cumin. While it traditionally roasts whole on skewers in a high-heat tandoor oven (a cylindrical clay oven heated with wood or charcoal, primarily used in the Northern regions of the Indian subcontinent), it can also cook in a conventional oven, rotisserie, or grill. Use a meat thermometer (or even an instant-read thermometer) for the best results.

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