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How to Braise Mixed Chicken Parts

Braising delivers succulent meat and a rich, velvety sauce—no wonder it’s a classic way to cook chicken. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new to add.
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Published Jan. 30, 2019.

How to Braise Mixed Chicken Parts

My Goals and Discoveries

Juicy, tender chicken

Brine the chicken and cook each cut to the ideal temperature. Finish in a low oven for gentle, consistent heat.

Full-flavored sauce

Leave the skin on (most of) the chicken to create a rich fond and extract lots of collagen and fat during cooking.

Dark meat and white meat finish at the same time

Sear some—but not all—of the pieces and stagger their addition to the pot.

Recipe

Braised Chicken with Mustard and Herbs

Braising delivers succulent meat and a rich, velvety sauce—no wonder it's a classic way to cook chicken. But that doesn't mean there's nothing new to add.
Get the Recipe

Remember the Corn Flakes slogan that Kellogg’s ran in the late ’80s, “Taste them again for the first time”? This braising story is my culinary equivalent of that campaign—a pitch to rediscover an old classic. I recently spent some time reacquainting myself with the basic tenets of braising chicken parts—both white and dark meat—and learned several ways to make a good dish a whole lot better.

Before we dig in, a refresher on what exactly braising is and why it’s an ideal way to cook chicken: It involves browning food and then partially covering it with liquid in a lidded pot and simmering it gently until the meat is tender. As it simmers, the cooking liquid takes on the meat’s flavor to create a luxurious, deeply savory sauce that you spoon over the meat.   

Chicken is great for braising. It’s got skin that renders loads of fat and collagen, which add flavor and lush body to the sauce, and meat that turns tender and gives up savory juices. But those assets can become liabilities if not handled properly. Chicken skin can stick to the pot and tear away from the meat, or its fat can make the sauce greasy. And then there’s the age-old issue when cooking chicken parts: Dark meat takes longer to cook than white meat does.

My goal wasn’t to reinvent the wheel. Rather, I put the classic method under the microscope to see if there were any improvements to make that would allow this technique to live up to its full potential.

Back to Basics

I started with 4 pounds of split breasts and leg quarters. To shorten the cooking time and make it easier to arrange everything in the pot, I separated the leg quarters into drumsticks and thighs.

After patting the chicken dry, I browned the skin side of each piece in a Dutch oven to create a deeply savory fond. Some recipes call for discarding the skin at this point, but I left it on so that all that aforementioned fat and collagen would contribute to the braising liquid as the meat simmered (it could be discarded before serving). The fat would add savory flavor, and the collagen would transform into gelatin, suffusing the liquid with silkiness.

I set aside the skin-on chicken and sautéed finely chopped onion with garlic, thyme, and pepper in the rendered chicken fat, stirring a tablespoon of flour into the softened aromatics before deglazing with white wine and water. The starch in the flour would keep the chicken fat emulsified and thicken the sauce, as a roux does for gravy. Voilà—braising liquid.

Don’t Get Stuck

Excess moisture on the skin will cause it to stick to the pot and tear away from the meat, so be sure to pat the chicken dry before cooking. Doing so will also remove excess salt from brining.

PROBLEM:

Meat sticks to the pot.

SOLUTION:

Thoroughly pat the chicken dry before searing.

Staggering Decisions

Now for the timing issue. White meat is done at 160 degrees, and we’ve determined that dark meat turns ultratender and succulent at 195 degrees, which is perfect for a braise. We also know that as it heats up, the chewy collagen in dark meat turns into soft gelatin, and this reaction continues as the temperature climbs.  

Most recipes for braised chicken call for starting all the pieces together and removing the breasts as they come up to temperature. The frequent monitoring required would take oven braising—our preferred approach since it cooks the meat so gently and evenly—off the table. Instead, I opted for a staggered method: I placed the browned legs and thighs in the simmering liquid and cooked them to 140 degrees, which took about 8 minutes. The breasts went in next, at which point I moved the pot to the oven, where everything cooked at a leisurely pace until the dark meat and the thickest parts of the breasts hit 195 degrees and 160 degrees, respectively. I was happy to have nailed those temperatures, but the breast meat—particularly the tapered ends—was dry and chalky.

The next time around, I halved the breasts crosswise, separating the thinner tapered ends from the thicker broad ends so that I could add the thin pieces to the pot last. I also brined the chicken before cooking. Meat destined for braising is not typically brined, but this unorthodox step greatly improved the white meat, keeping it moist and tender, and offered extra insurance that the thighs stay moist.

It took a few tries to find the final order of operations, but I eventually came up with the following routine: Give the dark meat an 8-minute head start, nestle the broad ends of the breasts into the pot skin side down, flip them 5 minutes later (I found that they needed to cook on both sides since they were so thick), and finally, add the tapered ends. (Try as I might, I couldn’t prevent the tapered ends from overcooking if I browned their skin, so I left them unbrowned.) Finally, I covered the pot and transferred it to a 300-degree oven, where the enveloping heat finished cooking the chicken at a bare simmer. After roughly 20 more minutes, all three cuts of chicken were as tender and juicy as could be.

The only thing that remained was to give the sauce some oomph. Whole-grain mustard, fresh parsley, and lemon juice perked things up. The recipe was easily adaptable by swapping out the mustard and herbs for other ingredients, such as tomato and basil for a Mediterranean version. These recipes will remind you why this technique is a classic.

How to Braise Chicken Parts

Braising both white and dark meat in the same pot requires a few tweaks to this time-honored technique, including staggering the cooking.

BRINE CHICKEN 

We brine all the chicken pieces for 30 minutes and then pat them dry.

BROWN (MOST OF) SKIN 

We sear the skin on all the pieces except the tapered breast pieces (the most prone to drying out) to create a flavorful fond.

GIVE DARK MEAT HEAD START  

The long-cooking thighs and legs (with the skin left on) go into the braising liquid first.

ADD THICK, THEN THIN, PARTS OF BREASTS  

We add the thicker broad pieces first since the thinner tapered pieces need less time to cook.

FINISH IN OVEN 

We transfer the pot to the oven, where the chicken cooks evenly and gently until the breasts register 160 to 165 degrees.

Braised Chicken with Mustard and Herbs

Braising delivers succulent meat and a rich, velvety sauce—no wonder it's a classic way to cook chicken. But that doesn't mean there's nothing new to add.
Get the Recipe

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Get the Recipe

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