How to cook chicken in a healthy way

For example, experts say dry cooking at high temperatures of up to 250 degree C, longer cooking durations, and even the doneness of the chicken may lead to the production of harmful chemicals.

These carcinogenic chemicals can include:

heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs) or heterocyclic amines (HCAs)
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
advanced glycation end products (AGEs)

Different parts of chicken have different levels of fat and cholesterol. Experts say the breast meat is the leanest with 28g containing just 1g of fat. This is followed by the chicken's legs which has 2g of fat per every 28g.

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Cut off the fat

Before you decide to cook chicken, make sure you cut of all the visible fat as it isn't good for your heart. These fat deposits usually look white in color, and they are usually under the skin.

To make it healthier, you should first marinate it with healthy spices like turmeric, coriander along with curd so that the chicken absorbs all its nutrients and becomes tastier. After that, you could try cooking it in a pressure cooker because long cooking is actually bad for chicken but also in order for the chicken to get soft and tender to eat.

On frozen chicken

These days with the advent of cold-storage a lot of people have started consuming frozen chicken. After removing it from the freezer, experts advise that you should thaw it in the refrigerator as doing this anywhere else would cause bacteria to build-up. They also add strongly that once you've thawed a frozen chicken you should never refreeze it. So, thaw only the amount of chicken you need at that point in time.

Four ways to cook chicken in a healthy way

Cooking methods that don’t brown the meat or produce smoke tend to be better for you. Most of these use water in some way or another.

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The never-open-the-pot-while-cooking method

This method takes trust; you can’t check the chicken breasts or watch them cooking. The method isn’t searing, sautéing, broiling, frying, or baking; it heats the chicken breasts quickly on the stovetop then lets them essentially poach from the inside out in their juices in a covered pan.

You can’t peek, but if you follow this method exactly, you won’t be disappointed, say experts.

Seasoning the Chicken

This method alone makes plain, simple chicken breasts — a blank slate to be used on top of salads, rice dishes, and tacos. But you can season the breasts any way you like; make them spicy, or flavor them with fresh herbs.

Steaming

Steaming is another healthy and quick cooking method for chicken. Steaming is a high temperature method with a short cooking time that has been shown to produce fewer HCAs compared with other high temperature cooking methods.

The steam prevents a crust from forming on the surface of the chicken, which reduces drying out of the meat to produce a moist and tender product.

Pressure cooking

Like steaming, pressure cooking uses high temperatures for short durations and produces moist, tender, and flavorful chicken dishes.

Given that longer cooking times increase the production of HCAs mentioned earlier, pressure cooking’s short cooking duration is likely to produce fewer HAAs, PAHs, or AGEs as well.

An older study found that pressure cooking reduced the oxidation of cholesterol in meat.