Chicken is one of the most popular ingredients to cook with.
Not only is chicken inexpensive, but you can also get it to taste like a variety of things.
If you want to do plain chicken grilled or put the chicken in an enchilada or a soup, you can do so.
It is a versatile meat to cook with and one that makes sense to continue to use if you are doing a lot of cooking at home.
However, sometimes chicken can dry out.
When it dries out, it gets chewy and a bit difficult to taste or enjoy.
There are several things you can do when this happens, and we have put together some great options for you.
How To Moisten Dry Chicken (Step By Step)
Once your chicken has been dried out, you may think it is too late to save.
The good news is that this is not always the case.
There are several ways to salvage dry chicken, but you may have to get creative with the dish that you are making.
However, here is the most basic way to add some moisture back into your chicken.
1. Shred The Chicken
Trying to get an entire chicken breast to have moisture again can be difficult.
When you shred the chicken, you create more access into the interior part of the chicken breast and allow more moisture to get in.
The shredding of the chicken can be done using two forks, and it should only take a few minutes, even if the chicken is dry.
Although this may then limit what you can use the chicken for, the shredding process will help you to get a better end result.
2. Prepare The Broth
The next thing you want to do is prepare the broth you will use to moisten the chicken.
The broth should be chicken broth, and it can either be homemade or purchased from a store in a can or carton.
The chicken broth used can be lower in sodium, and that is fine as well.
Typically, it is best to place the chicken broth in a frying pan and put it on medium heat.
Once it is hot, you can move on to the next step.
3. Place Chicken In The Broth
Next, you will place your dry shredded chicken into the warm broth.
It does not need to be so much broth that all of the chicken is floating in the broth.
Simply put enough that you can mix the chicken around and get it completely coated.
This process does not need to take long.
In fact, if you spend too much time cooking the chicken in the broth, you may end up causing yourself even more trouble with the cooking process.
The broth should soak up into the chicken, helping it to be much moister.
4. Drain The Broth
Chances are you will not need all of this broth in the recipe that you are cooking.
Once the chicken has had some time to absorb the flavors and the liquid from the frying pan, you can then set the chicken aside and drain the broth.
At this point, your chicken should be ready to use in a recipe.
Depending on how dry your chicken was before this project, you may have a hard time getting the exact texture that you need.
One thing that is certain is that you will see some improvement from going through this process of putting the chicken in the broth.
Many chefs will keep chicken broth around because it can help add moisture back to several different dishes when needed.
In addition, when you are heating food up, sometimes adding just a bit of broth will bring it back to its original texture and taste.
Overall, the process of moistening dry chicken should not be all that difficult, and you can be well on your way to producing a top-quality dish in just a matter of minutes.
If you find that the process is not as successful as you would have hoped it would be, there are some things that you can do to try and salvage the chicken.
Here are some ideas for you to create new dishes that will help use this dry chicken.
What Can I Make With Dry Chicken?
Once your chicken seems a bit dry, you will need a dish that has some liquid involved to help it taste better.
At first thought, this may seem a bit odd, but once you see the different types of dishes that we suggest, you will see that you have endless options left in front of you.
Here are some dishes that you can make with dry chicken.
1. Chicken Soup
Chicken soup or chicken noodle soup is the most popular way to use chicken that may have dried up a bit from overcooking.
Truthfully, once you place the chicken in the soup pot, you will never know that it was a bit dry to begin with.
The chicken will sit in the broth of the soup, and it will soften up.
Adding lots of vegetables and other flavors will also help to add to the overall success of a chicken soup meal.
If you feel comfortable with the chicken soup idea, you can expand into lots of other different types of soup that require chicken.
In fact, there are thousands of soup recipes that will only benefit from having some chicken added to them.
2. Chicken Casserole
A chicken casserole will keep your dry chicken surrounded by other tasty ingredients.
Casseroles start out as a liquid-type meal, and then as they bake, they will solidify a bit.
The excellent news for those who are trying to salvage dry chicken is that the casserole is going to disguise any issues with the dry meat.
As long as you cook your casserole properly and you don’t overcook it, the meal should have plenty of moisture and completely hide the fact that your chicken was dry.
In fact, sometimes, when preparing meat for a casserole, chefs will not even worry all that much about the doneness to which the meat is cooked.
As long as it is safe to eat, it will work itself out while inside the casserole dish.
Similar to soups, there are thousands of different casserole recipes that you can make with chicken.
Some of the most popular are chicken and rice or even a chicken enchilada casserole.
You will want something that has a bit of a creamy finished texture as these often have the proper amount of liquid in place to be able to help your chicken taste great again.
The chicken casserole is such an easy meal, especially for a weeknight dinner.
If for some reason, you cook your chicken, and it dries out more quickly than you would have liked, you can always freeze it.
When the time comes that you need to plan another meal, take out this frozen dry chicken and add it to your next casserole.
You will be able to put it directly into the casserole and have a meal on the table in a short period of time.
3. Chicken Salad
Chicken salad typically has quite a bit of mayo and other flavors in it.
These ingredients help to make the chicken salad have a softer and more impressive texture.
Recipes for chicken salad can range from being savory to sweet, yet they will almost always have enough moisture in them to hide the dry chicken.
Chicken salad can be eaten completely on its own, or it can be put on a sandwich or a pita.
As long as you are adding different flavors and textures to the chicken salad, you should have no trouble getting the chicken to taste great.
4. Dips And Appetizers
There are several different dips and appetizers that you can make with dry chicken, and one of the most popular is a buffalo chicken dip.
The buffalo chicken dip consists of cream cheese, hot sauce, cheese, and chicken.
There are various recipes for this dish, but most of them have similar ingredients to these as the basics.
The great thing about buffalo chicken dip is that as it cooks and melts, it will moisten the chicken inside the dish.
If you allow the chicken to sit in the dip and cook, there will be no way to tell that it was dry before you added it to your recipe.
The dips and appetizers that you can create with chicken are endless.
As long as you can pair the chicken with some kind of moisture, like broth or cream, it won’t matter if it was previously dried out and not all that easy to eat.
5. Chicken Nachos
Chicken nachos are another great way to use dried-out chicken.
With chicken nachos, you can get creative in the way that you use the chicken on the actual nachos.
By the time you add beans, cheese, vegetables, and more to your nachos, you will find that the chicken no longer tastes dry.
One of the best ways to prepare chicken to be used on nachos is to heat it using the broth method that we mentioned.
If you are able to do this, you will find that the chicken tastes better and is moister on top of the nachos.
Overall, there is so much that you can do with a plate of nachos that you will easily get the dry taste of the chicken out of the way.
Some people will put the dry chicken directly on the nachos, but heating it with a little chicken broth and maybe even some taco seasoning will help to make it a better finished product.
Generally, as long as you are disguising the chicken a bit and incorporating other ingredients, you will have no problem using the dry chicken you created.
It is undoubtedly better to try and salvage a meal than to accept that it is no longer useable or flavorful to eat.
How To Avoid Making Dry Chicken
Now that you know how to fix this issue, it may be a good time to look into how to avoid the issue from happening in the first place.
Chances are that the chicken is dried out because of a mistake that you made in the initial cooking process.
Luckily, we know this can be corrected, but for future reference, it may make sense to understand why the chicken may have dried out.
Here are a few things to look out for when making chicken.
1. Cooked Too Long
The most common reason that your chicken is going to be dry is that it cooked too long.
When you cook chicken, it is very important to pay attention to the temperatures you are using and ensure that you don’t overcook the chicken.
So many people worry about the potential issues of not cooking chicken long enough.
People have gotten very sick from consuming undercooked chicken.
Although you will want to avoid this at all costs, it does not mean that you need to overcook the chicken.
It is typically very easy to see if your chicken is cooked to the perfect temperature.
You will slice it open, and as long as all of the juices are running clear, the chicken is cooked perfectly.
If you wait until there is no juice flowing from the chicken, you will end up with a very dry chicken and something that you will need to work with to be able to use in a variety of dishes.
The same thing goes for grilled chicken.
Pay attention to the temperature on the stove and don’t let it get too hot, or you will lose some of the taste in your chicken.
2. Did Not Use Thermometer
A thermometer is a great tool to use when cooking chicken.
If you can use a thermometer, you can cook to the exact temperature you need to get the desired results.
Most of the time, cooking with the thermometer means inserting the probe deep into the center of the chicken.
When you are working with a roasted chicken, you will have to ensure that the tip of the thermometer ends up inside the leg or thigh but away from the bone.
This helps to make sure that the taste and quality of the chicken will come out the way you want it to.
Thermometers for cooking meat can sometimes get very expensive and cost hundreds of dollars.
However, most of the time, the pricing on a thermometer for chicken can be quite cheap and well worth the expense.
The best way to use the thermometer is to set an alarm on it to sound when the chicken is at 160 degrees.
For chicken to e cooked properly, it must go to 165 degrees.
Therefore, if you can stop the chicken just before the 165-degree (F) mark and keep a close eye on it so that it doesn’t dry out, your end results will e quite a bit better.
The problem that some people run into is setting the thermometer for 170 degrees or more in fear they are undercooking chicken.
This is just not necessary.
3. Not Cooked With Enough Liquid To Begin With
When you cook chicken, it can dry out quickly if you are not using any type of liquid or oil during the cooking process.
For instance, if you make a roast chicken, adding some vegetables and a bit of broth beneath the chicken in the roasting pan will help steam off and keep the chicken moist.
When you grill chicken, try to marinate it before putting it on the grill.
The difficulty with chicken is that, if you let it cook dry, it will remain dry as a result, so just try and use a little moisture before cooking.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you feel inspired to save the chicken that you thought was ruined.
Don’t get rid of something like this simply because it is dried out.
There are so many ways to save a meal that has dry chicken.
Whether you decide to add the chicken to a soup or a casserole, you will have options to ensure that food is not wasted.
Drying out chicken is a better mistake than drying out steak, so look at that as a positive and work towards improving your chicken cooking skills in the future.
Once you have the process down, it won’t take much effort to repeat it each time that you cook.
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