Last night we made a really simple, delicious and healthy dinner of spicy roast chicken breasts (cooked on the bone), steamed green beans, and mediterranean curry couscous.  The chicken was rubbed with a spice mix that included cayenne pepper, white pepper, salt, dried cilantro, garlic powder, onion powder, chinese five spice…and probably some other things.  After it was a little under-done (about 150 degrees), Matt basted it with a mix of peanut sauce (which we bought on sale, but you could easily make with peanut butter, soy sauce, sesame oil, etc.), cayenne pepper, and a little hoisin sauce (YUM!).  It then went back into the oven until it was nearly done (~158 degrees).  The finishing temperature for white meat chicken is 165 degrees, so we pulled it at 158, covered it in foil and let it rest for about 10 minutes while we cooked the green beans and the couscous (each took a little over 5 minutes).  

I didn’t get any pictures because the kitchen was a mess (I had just finished making a coffee cake in my silicone bundt pan for work!)

…plus I was just generally frazzled trying to cook dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast on a Monday night after work, but I had to blog this because part of what made the meal spectacular was the moistness of the chicken.  If you’re trying to eat healthy, chicken breasts will come up in a lot of recipes and are a really nice choice because they will work with a lot of different cuisines and flavors and they are low in fat and pretty easy to work with.  The problem is that white meat chicken goes from undercooked to horribly dry really really quickly.  People have a lot of tricks for guessing the done-ness of various types of meat.  A lot of people will just slice into the chicken breast and see if it’s pink–the problem with this method is that meat really needs to rest before being cut in order to keep it moist.  The digital probe thermometer Matt got me for Christmas is the answer! This was the second time I’ve used it–the first time, I used the preset temperature for white meat chicken but it turned out slightly dry–their preset is actually at 165, so by the time it rests, it’s gone up 5 or 10 degrees and has past the point of moistness that makes it palatable.  So this second-time around, I used the manual temperature setting and got to the exact stopping point I wanted, letting the chicken finish cooking during the covered, resting stage.  It was SO good! Spicy, moist, and accompanied by yummy cous cous and green beans! And I baked an extra breast of chicken that we’ll chop and use for fried rice on Thursday when our CSA veggies come in!

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