I always get asked how to cook perfect chicken. It naturally a broad question, as there are so many factors depending on what part of the chicken you are cooking, a whole chicken, chicken breast, chicken wings and diced chicken for that perfect stir fry.
Let’s face it we actually need to ensure chicken is cooked perfectly, under cooked chicken can be harmful to most animals let alone humans and over cooked chicken, well unless we all have canine teeth can be very tough and hard to swallow. We all want it juicy, tender and no pink bits right.
Some of the most common questions I get asked and will cover off with a future article –
- How long to cook chicken legs in oven at 425?
- Cooked chicken in fridge for 7 days? Can I still eat?
- How long to cook frozen chicken in crockpot?
- How long do you cook bbq chicken in the oven?
- How to cook perfect chicken breast?
Have I lost you yet? Yes get straight to the point. In this article I wanted to be a little more unique and explain the actually questions the professional cooks/chef’s want to know, but I believe these are some of the most interesting and important when choosing your preparation method to cooking your next perfect chicken.
Sous Vide Cooking Times
I have compared three cooking methods, Conventional stove top, Sous vide machine and Oven for cooking the perfect chicken, you can also compare – Beef, Duck, Eggs, Salmon and Lamb with the infographic I have designed for easy visual representation. You know the Sous Vide Machine is one of my favourite’s just by the name of my blog, but for this I wont be bias.
I wanted to explore the results from our analysis in more detail and compare the following key factors in cooking the perfect chicken –
Average Time to Cook Chicken to Perfection
For the purpose of our our comparison, we used a chicken of the size of 1.5kg (approx. 3.30693 lb), we can see from figure 1, cooking a chicken using conventional stove top resulted in the quickest method of cooking with a total time of 1.58 hours (94.8 mins).
Cooking chicken in the oven was 1.88 hours (112.8 mins) and cooking chicken using a Sous vide immersion cooker was 5 hours (300 mins).
So if you are time poor the obvious winner winner chicken dinner is the conventional stove top.
It is important to understand the different methods can result in totally different flavours and also textures. If your cooking for shorter periods and cooking with your favourite flavours you will find less flavours infused into your chicken other than the slower methods.
Average Power to Cook Chicken to Perfection
When comparing the power used to cook the perfect chicken, its clear that using an oven uses the most power, its important to note, we did not use gas oven, but electric oven for the purposes of this exercise.
The Oven used 3000 watts to cook a chicken, the conventional stove top 1600 watts and Sous vide machine 1000 watts. While this is no surprise to me, this allows us to work out the actual costs to cook your favourite chicken.
Average Cost to Cook Chicken to Perfection
Now saving the best to last. The cost to cook your favourite chicken dish using the conventional stove top is the cheapest costing approx. 25 cents. With the next most economical way of cooking chicken being the Sous vide machine, coming in at approx. 50 cents and the most expensive of all the methods being the oven at $1.50.
The Verdict
As I stated previously the conventional stove top may be the quickest method of cooking chicken, but what I want to highlight is this may guide you in the choice you make when cooking. But you need to weigh up if your looking at time? flavour? or what it takes from your hip pocket each time you cook chicken. Each have pro’s / cons, but you are not going to put whole chicken on stove top expecting the lovely chicken stuffing you have created to infuse in a short period of time.
I am trying not to be bias, but I actually love the Sous vide method, as you can use many a herb and spice with your chicken in bag and cook it over time, yes 5 hours, but you can set and forget almost and know that this is not going to break the bank, but you will also get those full flavours infused for the longest period of time. Just need some planning to make this cost effective method work for you.
I have tested the Sous vide method using all three versions of machines we have reviewed at – Best Sous Vide Cooker.
Important Disclaimer
Chicken Perfection – will change depending on each individual situation and taste obviously, chicken perfection – We used well done as our indicator that the chicken was cooked correctly.
Chicken Size – Cooking times will differ pending size of chicken and methods.
Prices Used – We used an average of power usage charges across the United States in USD. Each state and country worldwide will differ. This data is to be used for indication purposes only and not deemed 100% accurate due to factors such as age of cooking equipment, state of US or worldwide countries.
Indicator Only – Figure 1, is for indication purposes only and we do not recommend using these as definitive values. You should always adhere to your produce labels and or recipe cooking times and sizes.