Once or twice a month, I buy chicken breast tenderloins, cut them into cubes, and simmer them with some sort of Asian sauce: Indian simmer sauce from a jar, Thai curry from a foil packet, Japanese curry from cubes. The finished product is served over rice. All are edible and tasty enough, but the chicken chunks themselves are rather dull and tasteless. I typically just barely brown them on both sides in a tablespoon of oil before reducing the heat and adding the “simmer sauce.”
What can I do to make the chicken more flavorful on its own? Brown it more? Marinate it in something like buttermilk or lime juice? Or is flavorless just in the nature of modern mass-produced chicken breasts?
As a general rule, I’d brown the meat first (get it good and brown), remove it from the pan or pot, cook the other ingredients and put the meat back in when you’ve finished cooking (especially if you’re actually cooking other ingredients).
How long are you simmering? If the chicken is cooked through during browning AND you simmer (for long enough to cook the meat if it started raw) then you’re overcooking the meat.
It sounds counterintuitive for meat simmered in broth or sauce to be dry, but chicken breast meat can indeed emerge tough and dry-tasting.
I second the idea of browning the meat, setting it aside, cooking everything else, and then adding the chicken back in towards the end.
I tend to marinade meats for curries in just some crushed garlic and finely chopped ginger root (with a splash of oil). Having pretty-much self-taught myself to make pretty some exquisite Indian(esque) curries I tend to fry a base of chopped onions, then add other spices, followed by the meat - and garlic only needs quite short-term frying like the meat. At that stage you’ll likely want to add some moisture (just tomato puree plus minimal water usually for me now) and keep covered on a low heat to tenderise.
OK, while I said thighs, if you’re going to go the chicken breast route (and I do use chicken breast from time to time, so I’m not against it–I just find for anything that is going to simmer for awhile, thighs are much, much better and have more flavor), then try marinating them in a mixture of yogurt, garlic, ginger, some kind of curry powder, salt, and pepper (or whatever combination you have.) Overnight, if you remember, but an hour or two should do fine, as well. Then fry them up and brown them, and only simmer for as long as it takes for the breasts to cook through.
Someone suggested using leg meat, and that’s a good idea. But I’d also stay away from things like the Indian simmer sauces that are in the supermarket. I’ve tried them but found them really, really bland. If you get a curry paste like one from Patak and use that as the basis of your curry, it will be better. In short, a from-scratch curry is going to taste better, although it will be more work.
Agreed with this, too. Patak’s curry paste pack a flavor punch and are easy to use. Not quite as convenient as simply dumping a protein into a simmer sauce, but not at all that much more difficult. You usually just need to add some onion, maybe some ginger and garlic (if you want), then possibly tomatoes and/or cream/coconut milk/yogurt, depending on what you’re making.
I will add that it’s not that much more work if you make more than one batch of curry powder or Garam masala at a time. While it may be better to make it at the time flavourwise it will still be worlds better than the dept store stuff and you can tweak the flavours to your liking. I like a hot Madras style curry, my wife doesn’t so I play with the heat and add more to my dish. I’m also partial to cardamom and add more than the recipe I started with calls for.
Mrs. L.A. is not a huge fan of curry, so I just use pre-made powder. But I do make large quantities of pork rub, Creole seasoning, and Cajun seasoning so I always have them on-hand.
Not that I notice. I looked it up, just to make sure, and Cooks Illustrated seems to be fine with it, so I think I’m safe. But try it to see. I was taught to use whole pods when I worked at a not specifically Indian restaurant in Scotland, so that’s what I’ve usually done.