The 6 Biggest Chicken Breast Mistakes To Avoid, According to a Food Pro

While many cooks might shake their heads at chicken breasts and tell you to stick with thighs instead, tough or tasteless chicken breasts are not a foregone conclusion. They don’t have to be bland and dry.

If you spend a little time preparing them and watch them carefully as they cook, your chicken breasts can turn out juicy and flavorful. Trust me! I’ve talked to chefs, taken notes from cookbook authors, and done my fair share of testing.

Here are six mistakes to avoid when you’re cooking chicken breasts and what you should do to get the juiciest, tastiest chicken breasts every time.

1. Brine Your Chicken Breasts

When I asked a handful of chefs to tell me the best way to cook chicken breasts, they all told me to use a brine. A brine is a salt solution—either dry salt or salted water—that helps chicken breasts retain moisture and flavor.

Dry brining consists of rubbing the chicken with salt and letting it sit for 20 to 30 minutes and up to 24 hours in the refrigerator before patting it dry and cooking.

Wet brining involves placing the chicken in a salt bath for up to 24 hours in the refrigerator before drying and cooking. If you’re sick of dry chicken breasts, try this technique.

In both dry and wet brines, the salt denatures—or relaxes—the chicken’s proteins and causes some water to seep to the surface. This tenderizes the meat and allows the salty water to seep back in. Even if you didn’t think about it a day in advance, you can still dry brine for as little as 20 minutes to benefit from this simple but effective step.

2. Marinade Your Chicken Breasts

White meat lacks the richer, fuller flavor of chicken legs or thighs, so you have to work a little harder to make it flavorful. Try a marinade—preferably one that coats the chicken overnight. Like a brine, a marinade is a simple step to take ahead of time, making a big impact later on.

A particularly powerful marinade ingredient is yogurt—seasoned or plain—because its lactic acid helps the chicken breast absorb water, resulting in a juicier breast.

Cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt suggests mixing mayonnaise with a marinade—about equal parts each. The mayonnaise will adhere to the chicken before and during cooking, which will help the marinade lend more flavor and help the chicken breasts brown nicely, thanks to the egg proteins in the marinade. 

3. Don’t Slice Too Soon

Slicing chicken breasts right after removing them from the heat may be tempting, but it’s a common mistake that might lead to a less juicy piece. If you let the chicken breast rest, the interior juices redistribute throughout instead of gushing out with an early slice.

4. Don’t Cook Unevenly-Sized Chicken Breasts

Chicken breasts are thicker at one end and thinner at the other. This makes it easy to overcook one end of the breast while you try to finish cooking the other end.

The solution? Pound your chicken breasts so that they’re a uniform thickness. You could pound them very thin and flat for chicken Milanese, say, or you can pound them only as much as you need to even them out.

To pound a chicken breast, wrap it in wax paper or plastic wrap. Using a meat mallet, rolling pin, or even the heel of your hand, gently pound the thickest part of the breast until it’s spread out to the same thickness as the rest of the breast. Alternatively, you could slice the breast into even pieces and reserve extra chicken for later.

5. Don’t Overlook Your Thermometer

It’s easy to overcook chicken breasts, especially boneless skinless, because they are lean. At the end of the day, an overcooked breast is an overcooked breast. No amount of pounding, brine, or marinade can save chicken that’s climbed well past 165°F.

That’s why you should always keep a thermometer on hand. It’s one of the best tools a cook can have and one of the simplest to use. When you think your chicken is almost done, test its temperature. If it’s 10 to 20 degrees below your target temperature, which is conventionally 165°F for chicken, remove the breasts from the heat and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes. The internal temperature will continue to climb.

6. Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts

This mistake stings a little… but the truth is that it’s easier to avoid all the aforementioned pitfalls with bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts.

The bone and skin provide natural flavor and protection from overheating or drying out. So when possible, bone-in, skin-on is the way to go. If you do choose boneless and skinless breasts, steer clear of all the no-nos above, and you’ll be golden.