Back on the stove cooking chicken

- August 30, 2025

As the weather cools up and gets colder, I tend to cook more and today that's exactly what I did. Although I only cooked 4 chicken breasts, I have a lot to say about cooking chicken and also my new pan.

I've been all over for new pans, the marketing for the price and the new tech doesn't work for me in most home goods shopping. I like something that works the first time, and doesn't have some kind of quality issue.

I finally accepted that one pan with a lid is going to be about $40.00. It's easy to think, you know, in 2025, I should be able to go and just grab a great pan for $20 but it's not the reality.

In the first picture you can see the pan, and luckily it did have the same size top as my big pot. In the pan is two chicken breasts but I overall cooked 4!

My experience for the last two years has given me enough to easily get through 4 chicken breasts, whereas before I struggled to keep it straight forward.

The temperatures of each stove and each pan really make a difference in cooking more than how you prepare it. For example, using butter or oil, each would be relatively okay in a non stick pan but temperature and quality of cookware come into play. Another factor is also if the chicken was frozen at any time before cooking. All 4 of these were frozen a couple days ago, and were left in the fridge before cooking.

One thing about freezing meat is that there's no way around the fact it's going to be chewier; it's going to take longer to cook and also this means adding more water for steaming and more non stick to the pan, as it continues to dry out what you had before the chicken is done. This is why I will never freeze chicken again, I will have to double check on the quality of beef from the freezer but chicken is definitely out of the picture.

For these chicken breasts, I had the burner on medium for a few minutes then put the pan right down dry with a lid. In a couple more minutes all I did was add butter, cold salt, black pepper and chicken stock and was just about time to put the chicken in. Since my pan is non stick there was the added luxury of the new pan vibe; but the pan isn't the only thing to thank for the meat not sticking.

Taking your time in the kitchen when cooking protein is so important and that's one thing I had to learn again today.