Welcome to episode 7 of the Cook Well channel, where I want to show you the infinite healthy meal protocol I use at least once a week. The point here is to stop focusing only on recipes, but instead how you can use cooking techniques to fit within your lifestyle.
Chicken Recipes Practice: https://www.cookwell.com/discover/collection/creating-healthy-meals-from-one-chicken-breast
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📚 Videos & Sources mentioned:
Chicken Breast Food Science: https://youtu.be/lAn4CXk1sQw?si=Wg5EPkJEZltMqzVv
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0:00 Intro
0:47 Why you should slice & salt chicken breast
3:36 How to season chicken breast
6:36 How to sear chicken breast
16:09 How to marinate chicken after cooking
18:12 Meal 1: Chicken Torta
24:21 Meal 2: Pasta Salad
29:49 Taste Test
in this video I’m going to show you my thought process behind how I can create an infinite number of healthy meals all starting from a single chicken breast but what does that mean well this chicken torta and pasta salad look like two completely different recipes on the surface but what they have in common is that they follow the infinite healthy meals protocol which is how I think about them and as always on this channel we’re going to do the whole thing completely live to show you the full transparent process and really the goal here is to stop thinking about just recipes but how you can make these recipes and protocols work for your lifestyle so let’s [Music] go so this is quite literally a method I use at least once a week it’s so simple ridiculously easy so we start with our chicken breast and then this is a secondary cutting board just for the the raw meat that I can slide around and what we’re going to do is First Slice this and kind of butterfly it so it is a little bit flatter it’s not like a pure butterfly but I’ve explained the science behind this in an old video of mine on the main Channel but the reason that we do this is to flatten out and make the chicken breast more even when it Cooks but literally that’s all I’m doing so I’m just kind of if it’s thick like this I’m kind of just sliding lightly in and peeling this back and then as you can see we get this nice uniform even flat piece that makes it really easy to cook evenly and then when you cook it evenly it means it’s going to be more juicy throughout so again more bulbas at the top thinner at the bottom we want to kind of match the the thinness at the bottom and again all I’m doing is kind of cutting into this thicker piece right here so it’s just a one of these and it doesn’t need to be perfect but it just needs to be better than the baldest end that it previously was so and that’s literally all the cutting we’re do I’m going to toss this over here okay so this is Step number one you have to thin this out step number two is to season this typically just salt um a good general rule of thumb if you want to try it out is to do 1% by the weight of the meat so if you have 200 gram of chicken that’d be like two grams of salt um and and if find out if that is a good salt level for you and then you can adjust up and down from there I’m actually kind of running out of salt here but and I don’t have any more in my pantry either so it’s fine but you could also depending on what you’re doing with this it this you could use regular salt you could also use like if you’re using this for soy sauce something like that you may not need to use as much salt as you want but the whole point of Step number two is to Salt it which will help season that meat and then this is a point where you can actually throw this into your fridge and many times I’ll do this so if I’m going out somewhere at I don’t know later I’m going to be out for a few hours like maybe I’ll come home at 5:00 and I will slice and salt my chicken and then just throw it in the fridge I can leave it in there overnight and kind of dry Brown it that salt will work work in and internally season or I can just come back to it in a couple hours when I’m making my meal today we’re going to actually season this though which is kind of Step number three so it’s slice salt and then season but there’s kind of two different ways to season you don’t have to season before you cook it one of these I’m going to season after I cook it so for the seasoning again I’m just coming up with this on the Fly I have a couple of combinations that I generally like to rely on um one of these is kind of a more uh maybe some Mexican inspired flavors in there so I’m going to use some freshly ground cumin going to wash this hand so I can use it okay so I’m going to make kind of a little Mexican is inspired dish so I’m going to just add some cumin seeds to my mortar and P and then at this point you can use any number of spice mixes it could be a pre-made rub it could be regano red pepper flake and garlic powder that’s a very common one I’ll use it could be I don’t know gam Masala cashmir chili pepper and turmeric for something maybe more Indian inspired you can literally play around with this infinite number of ways just depending on what you want to do so I’ve got some ground cumin seed this is some I think it’s like a New Mexico chili powder it’s spicy it’s good though and then lastly I’m going to do some smoked paprika for a little bit of kind of smokiness but that’s not super spicy then all we do so I have my one chicken breast here sprinkle this over kind of Pat it dry and I recommend going pretty heavy on the spices you know personal preference obviously but okay so as you can see well seasoned chicken we got the cumin the pepper powder I forget which pepper and the smoked paprika and then basically what we’re going to do now is sear this on the grill and I’m going to do the same exact thing with this one which is just salted and then I’ll show you how I’m going to season this one after we cook it with a vineet again it’s just a slightly different way that you can season this chicken and the point is you can season this so many different ways you can take spice mixes from any recipe and basically apply it to the chicken breast it’s probably going to taste good all right let me get that preheating okay so we have our chicken ready to go one more Pro tip when it comes to this method you should start preheating your pan before you actually go ahead and slice this because I want this pan to be like ripping hot and by ripping hot I mean at least like 400° fenhe so when we drop it on it’s going to start searing and cooking very very quickly which is going to give us a nice crust which we’ll see in just a second so I’m just at yeah like 405 that’s great we’re good to go now your oil choice for this I tend to use neutral oil but if this was a if this if I had seasoned this with oregano garlic powder and red pepper flake I’d actually probably use olive oil just because I like how that kind of Blends in there with those seasonings but for most cases using neutral oil like canola or peanut or corn or anything like that and I’m just going to let that heat up for a second in there try to prevent it from kind of getting away on me okay all right so again we’re ripping hot 420 right now now going to pop the chicken B straight down in the center oh did I overheat this already oh I forgot to record it okay well it’s fine okay now we have now we have stove cam I forgot to start recording but yeah basically this is the same technique that is used in blackening or blackened chicken um that you’ll find at restaurants and stuff it can be done with any SP mix basically the whole idea is you’re kind of searing those spices and really darkening them on the crust of the chicken then we’re going to flip it over and go again and here’s really where the magic of slicing that chicken thin comes into play because again this is a fairly flat surface compared to the bulbous breast that it’s normally in so it’s going to cook a lot more evenly um when we have this evenly and nicely thinned out and you can see it’s like kind of quickly raising the temperature all around the the uh the exterior of the chicken and I’m going a little drizzle of oil over the top of this side before I flip it over which also just kind of helps everything get cooking a little bit easier and you can see very deeply darkened on the crust there but that’s really what I’m looking for now I am going to scooch this one down to the other side just because I want to get the other one cooking and we kind of had to set up the griddle this way so it works with this camera um normally I’d have it positioned over both burners so I could be using kind of the pool thing for this chicken breast literally this is just salt I’m going to tap it dry just so it helps to get Browning a little bit quicker but we’re going to season this after and literally if you make salted chicken and sear it right like it actually does taste really good so if you like plain chicken I mean that’s perfectly fine I do that sometimes I’ll just make a sandwich with plain chicken or turn that into chicken salad and again same exact concept with this where super thin you can see the Heat starting to rise up through the chicken into the center but it’s moving much more evenly because we thinned it out and it lends you to cook it much faster so there’s going to be less moisture loss from the water leading you to a juicier chicken breast and yeah I like to give it a little like I said a little more oil on right before I flip it over just so I can really SE her on that next side as well forgot my thermometer all right so at this stage two keys going on one it is kind of getting smoky in here that is actually a good thing believe it or not um all you have to do to keep your kitchen clean is just like kind of wipe down this area afterwards and it won’t smell too bad open up a window throw a fan on we’re good to go but at this point we’re ready to start temp checking so I try to pull my chicken breast out at like 155 typically in the center right now we’re at like 137 is but as you can see when I’m temp checking around the chicken it’s fairly consistent throughout so this chicken breast still at like 115 not really close yet you can also flip multiple times you know as long as you pull it off within roughly that temperature that you’re looking for it’s going to turn out fine while this waits to come up to temperature typically you could be doing anything you want I’m going to wash this cutting board in a second here you could be starting to prep your other components it’s really just a waiting game so like feel free to just walk away from your chicken at this point if you want to the spice got me there yeah that chili pepper is it’s definitely a spicy one yeah all right so on this guy I’m at like 150 so I’m going to bring this over to the cutting board so as you can see the crust of all those spices it’s close to being burnt don’t get me wrong it’s close but it does not actually taste burnt then I’m just going to let that cool for a couple of minutes and we’ll check this one close all right nice then we have chicken breast number two again just this is literally just plain salted chicken breast um nice and brown though on the exterior if you make your chicken breast like that it tastes quite good actually do we use more oil than most people do probably but it’s not like the oil is getting infused in there it’s kind of just staying on the outside so you can always kind of towel it down if you want to if you’re afraid of getting that excess oil but it’s not really going to absorb too far inside the chicken like a deep fried food would Okay so we’ve got both of our chicken breasts here I’m going to show you how I season this plain one again this is just one of potentially unlimited options so what I like to do is just throw a marinade on this afterwards so I’m going to quickly chop this up kind of into cubes kind of again just depends on what you want to do with this but the idea with this method is you can start it and stop it at basically any point so I could have started with the slicing and the salting stopped there popped in my fridge I could have seasoned it popped in the fridge I can stop here after I’ve cooked this that that’s what I typically do a lot of the time is just I’ll pop this in the fridge and make it later so we’re kind of simulating that and yeah like really as you can see we’ve got these nice like pretty juicy pieces of chicken breast I don’t have this will work I guess okay normally I would use like a little bit of vinegar I’m going to use the liquid from this which is basically vinegar we’re going to use a little bit of olive oil little bit of oregano I think and some what do I want to use actually you know we use the generic Italian season so basically the Three core elements of this seasoning method are like just a little bit of fat you don’t have to do this just giving it a little baby drizzle um a little bit of like a vinegar Citrus anything like that give it a little bit of Tang and then any kind of seasoning again this is a little Italian seasoning and I’m kind of just like making a marinade onp top of this again one option you could marinate it before if you want for me I feel like you get a little bit more vibrancy from the spices and obviously the the touch from the the vinegar there and then what I would do here is I’m going to throw this into a pasta salad you can do a regular salad you can make a sandwich whatever you want so again any any any possible way you can season these doesn’t matter you can switch up any spice mixes so I think we’re going to make the torta first with this chicken breast so I’ve got the roll just wipe that down a little bit all right so we’ve got our bread roll we’re going to go with avocado and then since this one’s fairly ripe I’m just going to I’m just going to do one of these guys mash it right on all right then we’re just going to kind of assemble this on the Fly and it doesn’t really matter what I’m making here the the point is that I have this so I have to figure out a way to use it and because you have this it kind of forces you into using up ingredients you have in the fridge Pantry freezer Etc so it really is the Catalyst to forcing yourself to make something um good sometimes you may have all the perfect things that you want other times you may not that’s perfectly okay so I’m going to do some reffed beans I’m going to warm these up a little bit though all right all right a little bit of refried beans all right so we got reffed beans on the top we have our avocado on the bottom know lettuce down here throw a little bit of hot sauce here too almost empty or maybe it’s stuck I don’t know here we go it was stuck all right hot sauce little bit of queso fresco pickled onions oh I’m going to run outside for cilantro courtesy of uh Birdie’s beds epic gardening all right cilantro let slice into our chicken just absolutely struggling over here bro that was brutal one man versus an unopen thing of krma all right back to our torto chicken I mean gorgeous like contrast between the the crust and the juicy interior got to finish it off with little bit of crma you could make this into tacos obviously salad bowl Rice Bowl I happen to do a tour today again could have turned this into six or seven different meals alone as always all right now complete until we wrap it of course we’ll let that compress so that was meal number one let me show you how to do quickly meal number two big bowl I did cheat a little bit because I made some pasta ahead of time so we’re going to make a little pasta salad with this so cooked pasta any shape you want however much pasta you want perfectly fine add in your chicken nicely seasoned then we’re just going to keep throwing in any vegetables that you happen to have so I have cherry tomatoes then I’m just going to quarter all right tomatoes couple of brussel sprout shavings just for a little bit of green again this is really just about throwing together things not about making like the perfect version of something so we’ll do we’ll do yeah we’ll do with these do a little bit of red onion mozzarella cuz why not oh yeah some of these too again we want some we want some fresh stuff in there we want some pasta we want some chicken breast we want some pickled stuff we want some creamy stuff with cheeses going to add another little drizzle I like doing like half olive oil half kind of mayo just give it a little bit of creaminess this is like one of my favorite things especially for the summer make this on a Sunday eat the leftovers for the next couple of days when you want a quick lunch need a snack definitely one of those dishes that gets better with time and you can see we’ve got a a rain of textures flavors got the nice aromatics in there and again this is really like these are completely different dishes like you would look at these and be like what what do these have in common what do these have in common is they all started from just that chicken breast method they can lead you down completely different path ways but that’s kind of the point so let me clean up in here for just a second because I did this kind of very scrappily and then let’s give these a taste test because I got to get into these okay A little slice see what we’re looking like in here oh yeah personally have not made a torte in a while that’s hitting the spot right now and then like I said this is just one of my favorite make it stick it in the fridge before you know that you need to make something and it’s like one of the best decision that you can possibly make but yeah so that’s how I turn a pack of chicken breast into basically infinite meals and if you want to practice using this method we’ll list a bunch of recipes down below where again all you have to do is slice it salt It season it then cook it where your exploration goes from there cuz completely up to you we will leave a bunch of recipes down below where you can practice it but truly this is a method and technique that I use all of the time from you know a cooking perspective but also just a lifestyle perspective because I can fit it in throughout my day just about anywhere