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i love pan fried chicken usually with some tumeric, salt, pepper, rosemarry, and evoo. Anyways, I don't like to get my thermo dirty everytime, and sometimes i get it a bit overdone, sometimes the oppsite

Aaronut
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dassouki
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3 Answers3

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There isn't one.

The only reliable way to determine doneness of a chicken breast is to use a thermometer. If you didn't have a thermometer then you would have to cut open the breast to confirm. Outside of those the only other method is experience. e.g. knowing that it takes 5 minutes per side to cook a breast of X size, in Y pan, on Z stove, at M heat.

Given that you own a thermometer, it's kind of silly to ask for another way. Use it.

hobodave
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5

You can work on learning the finger test, but during your first experiments, I would cross-check this with your thermometer to make sure you know what it feels like.

Personally I prefer to only trust a thermometer, as then I can be absolutely sure (within the margin of error for the device) that my food contains no living harmful bacteria to hurt anyone I am serving.

justkt
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  • I also use the [finger test](http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/982/why-does-my-chicken-breast-become-so-dry/990#990). I'm never sure if I'm poking the right way, so I cut and use my infrared. – papin Oct 02 '10 at 20:46
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I do it restaurant style. I sear it nice and golden on one side, flip, sear a minute or two on the other, and then bung into a 350 degree oven. 12-14 minutes and it's done. (Obviously you can only do this if you have oven-safe frying pans). No need for thermometers, maybe a quick poke to double check.

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    I don't know if I would call that a "check for doneness." Restaurants can get away with that because they can produce repeatable results when working with the time/ingredients/equipment day after day. If you cook *anything* long enough, it's probably safe to say, "Sure, it *must* be done by now." But that's only safe if you way overestimate the minimum cooking time needed and err towards overcooking. – Robert Cartaino Nov 08 '10 at 17:51
  • YEah good info from @daniel, but doesn't entirely answer the question at hand. still his point is valid, if you know the combination well enough you can cook without checking beyond a "quick poke" lol. – Anonymous Type Dec 07 '10 at 21:44