There isn’t one single way to cut chicken but how you slice it can affect the taste when the meat is cooked.
Chicken is split into various parts, including breast, thighs, legs and wings. Boneless chicken breasts are a go-to for many people when cooking because they cook quickly, they can be cut into cubes or strips, and are considered to be healthy and lean as they’re often found skinless.
This part of the chicken is also versatile as it can be fried, baked or grilled and used in a range of dishes. Most of us don’t give much thought to how we cut chicken as we just want to quickly prepare it to add to our dish and get the meal ready to be served.
Kerry Whelpdale is a travel, food and fashion content creator with more than 70,000 followers on Instagram. She shares hacks relating to these topics, as well as recipes.
The foodie posted a reel on Instagram about how to cut chicken breast to get strips that are more tender. People who saw her video were impressed by this cooking tip.
In the short clip, she demonstrated two ways to cut chicken breast. Kerry wrote: “If you cut chicken against the ‘grain’ (width ways) it shortens the muscle fibers, resulting in more tender and easier to chew strips.
“If you cut chicken with the ‘grain’ (lengthways) you will have a chewier, firmer texture.” Josie and Nina are a duo who share casual, modern Italian recipes and they have put together a guide on how to cut chicken breast on their website.
They claim that the “best way” to cut chicken breast is against the ‘grain’. Explaining how to do this, they said: “If you look closely, you’ll see that every cut of meat has little muscle fibers that run through it almost like stripes. Just like a piece of wood cut from a tree, those fibers are the ‘grain.’
“In the image above, the grain is parallel with the knife. For cutting chicken, you can cut ‘with the grain’ or ‘against’ it. Another way to think of this is ‘across’ the grain.”
To identify where the ‘grain’ is, Josie and Nina suggest lining the blade of your knife with the “little white lines” in the chicken breast as these are the muscle fibers or ‘grain’. The pair add that cutting chicken against the ‘grain’ (and most meats) is the “key to more tender meat, especially when it’s grilled.”
The cooks explain that this method breaks the muscle fibers down into smaller sections making it easier to chew. In the caption of her Instagram post, Kerry asked: “Did you know?”
One user replied: “No but I’m going to do this now!” Another added: “I’ve [been] doing this the wrong way round then.”
A third said: “Yes, all meat you should cut against the grain, great tip.” A fourth user shared: “I remember learning this and being gob smacked.”