are you fed up eating the same boring chicken dishes this week I'll show you how to make the quickest and tastiest chicken ever boneless skinless chicken breasts are often the go-to protein when it comes to putting dinner on the table quickly the problem is if they're not cooked properly they can get really dry I'm going to show you a super simple technique for cooking chicken that's quick and tasty and which guarantees a tender and juicy result what we're going to do is season the chicken with a little salt and pepper Brown it on one side then we're gonna flip it over add some liquid and seasonings and then cover the pan to let the chicken steam and its own juices that's it so I'm gonna start by just giving a little salt and pepper sprinkle to my chicken breast if you're on a low salt diet you can skip the salt part if you want to just a few twists you know if you don't have a pepper grinder at home I would suggest you get one it just fresh pepper tastes so great and I've already got my pan heated up and so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to add the oil after the pan is hot and the reason I do that is because when your pan is hot you can use much less oil because it's gonna spread very quickly with the heat this is actually a nonstick pan so I probably didn't have to use it at all but we're gonna put just a little bit of oil in there for flavor it's nice and hot and I'm just gonna take this chicken and take the seasoned side and I'm just something place it right in that skillet we can hear it sizzling and I'm just gonna put it in there for a few minutes until it gets brown once it gets brown on one side we're gonna flip it over and finish cooking so my chickens nice and brown on one side so I'm gonna flip it over look how pretty that is this looks great so I'm just gonna flip it over and I'm gonna do this one really really simply I'm just gonna sprinkle it with a little dried tarragon I happen to like tarragon it's good with chicken it's kind of light kind of sweet and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna add a little bit of orange juice to my pan and you can see it's bubbling up I'm gonna put my cover on and I'm gonna turn the heat down a little bit smells really good and one of the things I want you to notice is that the steam is collecting on the lid and it's dripping back down under the chicken and that's really the secret to this recipe for keeping the chicken moist because if you put your chicken in the broiler or you do it on the grill all that moisture is just evaporating away and it's just making your chicken dry so when this is done we're gonna let this cook for a little bit and then when this is done you're gonna see how tender and juicy it really is while the chicken is cooking and the length of time is going to depend on how thick your chicken breasts are but figure 10 to 15 minutes or so let's talk about some of the ways you can vary this dish because there's almost an endless variety as far as seasonings you can use any herb you like I use tarragon but you can try basil in any herb that's taste good to you spices you can use ginger you can use garlic you can use onions or onion powder you can try curry powder and then with your liquid you've got a huge range - so you can try wine white wine or red wine works really well most of the alcohol cooks out if you're concerned about that you can use broth you can use the chicken broth or vegetable broth if you want fruit juices work really well I used orange juice you can use lemon juice you can use lime juice I've done it with pomegranate which makes a really delicious kind of a sweet glaze on the chicken you can also you also use different vinegars you can try balsamic vinegar which gets kind of thick and syrupy or rice wine vinegar which is but later the other thing you can do is if you're gonna use these chicken breasts in other dishes let's say you're gonna put it into a salad and you don't want a lot of seasoning you can just cook it with a little water or broth and then you can add the seasonings later when you're finishing up your dish some good combos that I like lime juice with cumin garlic powder and chili powder gets kind of a Southwest flavor I use the sweet herb like tarragon I did mine with orange juice but it's really good with balsamic vinegar because that's kind of sweet as well you can also try some ground ginger and then glaze it with a little bit of rice wine vinegar and a little bit of soy sauce you can also check out the discover good nutrition com website because I posted a detailed recipe for the chicken and some other recipe suggestions now that my chicken is cooked all the way through this is the last step but this is the really important part so I'm going to take the lid off and I'm gonna take the chicken pieces out for a minute I want you to notice too that I'm putting these on a clean plate one of the things you want to be really careful when you're cooking poultry or cooking fish is that you don't do what they call cross-contamination you don't want to put it back on the cutting board where you had the raw chicken I'm gonna just turn the heat back up a little bit and I'm just for just a minute I'm gonna stir what's left of these pan juices just to let it cook down just a tiny bit it's gonna thicken and evaporate just in it just enough so that I'm gonna be able to glaze the chicken with it and that's pretty good right about there I'm only left with a couple of tablespoons of liquid in my pan but believe me it's really really flavorful so I'm just gonna turn this off and then the last step I'm gonna just put my chicken back in here for a minute and I'm going to just kind of flip it over and just coat it a little bit with this delicious delicious glaze it's so pretty and that is it so I'm gonna put it on my plate over here and if you want if you've got a little extra in the pan you can pour the little bit of extra liquid right on top like that if you want to get really fancy you can put a little parsley on it which always makes it look like it came from a restaurant but one thing I also want to do is I just want to cut into it because I want to show you just really how nicely cook this is and how juicy it is and hopefully you'll be able to see it's just perfectly cooked all the way through and there's just some really nice liquid juice that's coming out of there so that means that my chicken is really really tender and it's just not dry at all so I hope you get inspired to try this technique remember it's really simple Brown it flip it season it add a little liquid cover and you're done and you can get dinner on the table in ten minutes you