Transcription
If the chicken you've been cooking at home is dry, boring, and bland, and you want to figure out how to make it juicy and delicious just like they do at the restaurants, then you are in luck. Cuz after this video, you'll never have to eat bland and boring chicken again.
Now, as someone that's been in the fitness game for a while, I've eaten chicken in every shape and form multiple times a day, more than most people. And this recipe right here is hands down my favorite method, and it's easy. Good chicken always starts with good chicken breast. This here is Purdue, which is free-range and has no added hormones. But you don't need to go that far; whatever is a step up from the store brand—that's just a tiny bit more—is usually going to be way better quality than the cheapest stuff.
Before we prep the chicken, we are actually going to preheat our air fryer. This step makes all the difference in the world. Set it as high as yours will go; if yours goes to 400, do 400. I'm going to let this preheat for roughly 5 to 10 minutes. I'm going to go with eight just to make sure it's good when we need it.
As far as prepping the chicken goes, it's actually pretty easy. We have boneless, skinless chicken breasts; they've already done a good bit of the trimming for us. And this step isn't even technically necessary, but I do recommend you go in—you're going to find this little joint right here on a lot of these pieces—cut that out because if not, you're going to be in for a surprise when you're eating this. Nothing ruins a chicken meal quite like that unexpected bite. That's what it looks like on that one, so you get rid of that—boom. As far as trimming goes, that's it.
Now, the next step is going to be to tenderize the meat. You're going to need a Ziploc bag, preferably one of these extra-large freezer ones. And we would just toss the chicken breast right down inside. Once they're in here, get all the air out of the bag and grab a meat tenderizer. If you don't have one of these bad boys, just use something heavy; it can literally be anything—an old metal trophy, a… how much does your cat weigh? All we're going to do is go in, pound out our chicken breast till it's about ¾ of an inch to an inch thick. You want your other chicken breasts to be the exact same thickness. Look at that, see how much bigger they got, and now they're even all over; there's no thick spots. That's exactly what you want.
Now, for the next tip, you're going to need a fork. You can use a knife, a spork, whatever you got, that we can jab down into the chicken breasts. We're just going to create a bunch of these little micro holes. This is going to allow the rub that we're going to coat this thing in to get down inside and really permeate the entire chicken breast, that way it's not just the outside that's seasoned and the middle's missing that flavor. Just go ahead, give her a hit, flip it, do the exact same thing.
Now that that's done, the chicken is fully prepped. We just got to create an easy marinade. We got a food scale, small bowl; this is going to add a ton of flavor without adding barely any calories. We just need 2g of sea salt, 2g of paprika, 1g of garlic powder, 1g of onion powder, a little bit of ground mustard, a little bit of Italian seasoning, and a little dash of black pepper. Make sure you give everything a good mix. And then all we'll do now is sprinkle this on top of our chicken. Go ahead and pat it in, get this thing nice and coated. And for this rub, if you're making more than two chicken breasts, just multiply it out. And if you're only making one, divide it in half. And feel free to tweak any of these ingredients; add a little, a little more, or take a little something away if you want. But if you stick with these basic ones, it's going to taste good every single time and not add any calories. Once you got it, give it a flip and go ahead and coat the other side.
Now all there's left to do is cook. Take your air fryer basket, go ahead hit it with a light coating of non-stick spray, and then place your chicken right down inside—boom. And then make sure you hit it with a light coating of non-stick spray. Then we just place it in our preheated air fryer, and we're going to cook it at 400° for 5 minutes. After that 5 minutes, you can see it's well on its way. All that we're going to do is flip each one of these over—a little bit more non-stick—and then now these just go back in the air fryer for about 3 to 5 more minutes. The key to making sure it's perfect is utilizing a meat thermometer. At about the 3-minute mark, you're going to hit it with this, and as soon as that internal temperature hits 165, it is perfectly done and ready to enjoy. I'm going to toss these in; I'll see y'all in a second.
Check it out, folks; doesn't that look delicious? Go ahead, give it a cut. Take a look at the middle—nice and juicy, just how we want it. And now, right there, folks, is how you make the perfect chicken right at home. Might be a little hard to see, but that's so juicy and tender, it literally just falls apart. Don't get much better than this.
And as some of you may know, chicken is one of the leanest protein sources on the planet. So in a 4-ounce serving, we're only getting 125 calories, with 1g of fat, we're only getting 3g of carbs, and 26g of protein. That's why, in my opinion, chicken is one of the perfect foods to eat if you're on a diet, as long as you cook it the right way. So if you've been trying to make chicken at home and it hasn't been good, give this a shot. Rub it all, follow the steps; I know if you do, you'll love every bite.
And if you want even more recipes—not just chicken, healthy desserts, pizzas, burgers, all made the healthier, lower-calorie, still-delicious way—you can always pick up a copy of my cookbook at the first link down below. And the cool thing is, you get it once, every time I drop a new recipe like this one, it gets added for free. So we've got over 350 pages and counting. I know if you follow this in here, you truly do, you'll love your diet and you'll see results no matter what; you just got to do it. And the best part about having a healthy dinner is following up with a dessert like this triple chocolate wasted anab bar. These are finally back in stock, and I couldn't be happier. This really is the best-tasting protein bar in the world; seriously. If you want a protein bar that doesn't suck, visit thebar.com; code RJ will save you money. Buy them at shop HB, GNC, Sheets, gas stations, Amazon; we're basically everywhere. Hit the store locator on the site if you want to find them near you.
That's it, folks; about to wrap this up. I got this extra breast right here, which is perfect for meal prep. Literally toss it in Tupperware, slice it up, eat it tomorrow. And yeah, that's going to wrap this video up. Appreciate you guys as always. For more great videos or to watch old ones, subscribe to the channel. Thumbs-up button if you like the video, and make sure you hit the bell because every single week I'm dropping two new videos. We're going to go into the new year basically already at our resolution; that's the goal. If you're with me, ring that bell. And with all the results, if you need some new clothes, as always, everything I wear in these videos, youngerl.com, RJF saves you money. Appreciate you all as always, until next time, ladies and gentlemen. I'll see every one of you with the next video. See you guys; we're gone. You can just eat it like this.