Let’s be honest, we all know how to cook chicken – roasted on a Sunday, poached for a soup, baked with a rich saucy traybake, pan-fried for fajitas – but have you ever heard of velveting as a technique?
It’s a method that sounds scarier than it really is: you coat your chicken in bicarbonate of soda, which is an alkaline and really tenderises the meat, resulting in a beautifully soft bite. The bicarb coats the chicken and gives something for your spices, sauces or aromatics to stick to, as well as penetrating the meat and softening the fibres of the chicken. You can do it with beef or pork, too, but we wouldn’t recommend this method with fish – the flesh is delicate, so the bicarb would be too harsh. Allowing it to sit in the fridge means it has time for the chemical reaction with the bicarbonate to take place – but don’t leave it for longer than 30min or the chicken will start to break down too much and no one wants mushy chicken!
If you try the velveting technique with a whole chicken breast, the bicarb is too strong and will harden the exterior without tenderising the inside. Slicing it also gives you a quicker cooking time, meaning your dinner is ready in a flash – winning all round! Adding the salt helps open the pores and allows the bicarb to penetrate the chicken.
Velveting doesn’t affect the flavour, which means you can try this in a variety of ways – maybe you want Mexican-vibes for taco night, Italian-pesto style for pasta or the route we’ve taken here with fresh and vibrant Asian-inspired flavours.
There are a few variations on this method: you could add an egg white or cornstarch, and there are also options to add a little oil or soy sauce, too. Here in the GH Kitchen, we found this to be the simplest and most effective way, as well as producing the tastiest result.
