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Chicken School

Common Chicken Stovetop Mistakes–and How to Avoid Them

Easy Tips & Recipes For Cooking Chicken on the Stovetop

There’s an ease in cooking your chicken on the stovetop: unlike the grill, you can cook in any weather, and it requires less energy than using the oven. But, there are some common mistakes that home chefs make when it comes to cooking chicken in a skillet. Here we offer our tips and recommendations for ensuring perfectly cooked skillet chicken every time.

Chicken Quality

If you’re not cooking your chicken meals from raw, you’re missing out. Start with fresh, Canadian chicken. It’s always grain-fed and free of hormones and steroids, making Canadian chicken a high-quality meat that always tastes great. To be sure you’re buying fresh Canadian chicken look for the “Raised by a Canadian Chicken Farmer” logo in-store, or ask your grocer.

Pan Quality & Heat

If you’re cooking on the stovetop on a regular basis you’ll want at least two skillets–one small and one large. Pans with high sides are good for braising meats and heating saucy dishes. View more suggestions for utensils to make you a master chicken chef here.

Also, make sure you wait for your pan to heat up before adding the chicken to cook. An evenly heated skillet ensures evenly cooked chicken. How to tell? Place a drop of water in the pan. If it evaporates right away it’s not hot enough, but if you tilt and rotate the pan and the droplets skate around together, you’re good to go!

Separate

Always cook your chicken in a separate pan than your produce. This helps you control how quickly your chicken cooks, but also reduces cross-contamination and food-borne illness. For more tips on food safety at home, view our Easy Guide to Chicken and Food Safety.

Deglaze

Deglazing the pan is an underused secret to making delicious sauces for sautéed chicken. This technique basically makes a sauce out of what’s already been cooked in the skillet. It’s an efficient way to make use of the most flavourful bits by simply adding liquid (such as wine, chicken stock, juice, or even mustard) to the hot skillet and letting it reduce a bit to create a pan sauce. Try the deglazing technique in these chicken skillet recipes:

Now that you’re ready to get cooking on the stovetop, here are some of our favorite chicken skillet recipes: