A number of chicken dishes require you to boil the chicken first and then go about the rest of the recipe. Boiled chicken is so versatile that you can make practically anything with it. But if you over boil the meat the flavor will be all gone and all you’ll be left with is very tasteless, fibery chunks of meat that are no good. So, learn how to boil chicken properly from the given article, followed by some very delectable boiled chicken recipes.Soups, salads, casseroles, sandwiches, gà luộc chặt. They all call for boiled chicken and boiling a chicken properly is the trick to churn out extremely scrumptious and flavorful chicken preparations. One would think that how big a deal could that be? I mean, we are just boiling the chicken and that’s all. But there are some things that you do need to pay attention to. Like how long do you boil chicken? Do you boil the chicken as a whole or chunk it up and then boil it? What else could you add to the chicken while boiling it so that you can enhance the flavors a little bit? All these little details work towards giving you a perfectly boiled chicken or leaving you with an atrocious piece of fibrous, tasteless chicken that looks like it has got anemia. So, let us learn how to boil chicken properly, shall we?

How to Boil Chicken?

Boiled Whole Chicken
As I said before, a greater number of chicken recipes will ask you to pre-boil the chicken before you actually start with the recipe itself. But very few people know that you can actually boil an entire chicken faster than pieced chicken. You can always go about cutting it later on. So, let us see how you can go about doing this. You will need the following ingredients.
Whole chicken, (3 lbs)
Carrots, 3 (not peeled and chunked)
Celery stalks, 2 (cut into bite sized pieces)
Onion, 1 (large, not peeled, cut into halves)
Peppercorns, 1 tbsp. (whole)
Salt, 2 tsp.
Water, enough to cover the chicken
Procedure
In a large Dutch oven, place the whole chicken and throw in the carrots, celery, onion, peppercorns and salt. Add enough water so that the entire chicken is immersed and then cover. Start the flame at high and then once the water starts to boil, lower the flame so that a milder steady boil sets in. Let the chicken boil for 1½ hours. Check at this juncture and if you see that the flesh is separating out of the bones, it is ready. Let the chicken stay in the broth and cool down completely before you choose to shred or cube it. You can then use it to make either chicken salad or any chicken soup recipe.

Boiled Chicken Breast
You can make 8 cups of chicken and 8 cups of broth with,
Chicken breasts, 6 (4 pounds, bone-in)
Carrots, 2 (chunked)
Celery ribs with tops, 2 (cut into bite sized pieces)
Onion, 1 (small, halved)
Bay leaf, 1
Garlic clove, 1
Water, 2 quarts
Salt, 2 tsp.
Pepper, 1 tsp.
Procedure
Again, place the chicken in the Dutch oven and throw in all the other ingredients. Pour in the water, cover and bring the chicken to a boil on a high flame. Once its boiling, lower the flame and let it steadily simmer for 40 minutes straight. Remove from flame and when the chicken has cooled considerably, in the broth itself, skin and bone it. Dice, shred or slice the boiled boneless chicken as per your need. You can store this meat in the fridge for up to 3 months in ziploc pouches.

Boiled chicken is a perfect meat substitute for any kind of meat. Now, let us see some recipes in which you need to you boiled chicken.

Boiled Chicken Recipes

Gà Luộc Chặt
This Vietnamese boiled chicken is served atop steaming white rice on monsoon days just like khichuri (a kedgeree variation) is a must for any Bengali household whenever the heavens choose to open the floodgates. Gà luộc chặt is made a lot during the new years as well for the Vietnamese people offer boiled chicken to gods and ancestors. So, how do you make this boiled chicken with soy sauce which has been infused with fried shallots. You can make this with,
Chicken, 5 lbs. (boiled in water with 1 teaspoon of salt for 40 minutes)
Shallots, 3 (fried)
Chilies, 2
Soy sauce, 4 tbsp.
Procedure
After the chicken is boiled, use a bamboo skewer to prick the chicken at the juncture of breast and the thighs and lift it so the fat rise up to the top. Then slowly take the whole chicken out so that the fat coats the chicken to render it all glazed. Allow the chicken to cool. In the mean time, blend the other three ingredients together well and make a condiment. Chunk the chicken into bite sized bits and serve with the sauce, atop rice.

Chicken Salad
For this chicken salad recipe, gather,
Chicken, 1 lb. (boiled)
Green olives, 10 (chopped)
Black olives, 10 (chopped)
Romaine lettuce, ½ a head (hacked)
Apple, ½ (chopped)
Mayonnaise, 5 tbsp.
Honey, 1 tbsp.
Lemon juice, 2 tsp.
Garlic, 2 tsp. (minced)
Procedure
Mix the boiled chicken, olive, apple and lettuce in one bowl and the mayo, honey and lemon juice in another. Now mix the two together and toss for a while. Serve chilled.

The Chinese of course add ginger peel from a 2 inches ginger, 6 minced garlic cloves with skin, 6 chopped spring onions and two teaspoonfuls of sesame oil to the pot full of water, while boiling a large chicken. The allow the chicken to come to a boil, simmer it for 10 minutes and then allows it to sit in the broth for 60 minutes. They then fry a 2″ minced ginger and 4 cloves of fresh garlic in 1/3 cup of peanut oil on a medium flame and cut the chicken up in 8 pieces. They top the pieces with the sautéed garlic and ginger along with the oil and drizzle plentiful of soy sauce from top.

So, there you go. Various ways to have perfect boiled chicken to make the most delightful dishes. Remember, if a dish asks you to boil a chicken for less than 20 minutes, it means that you have to parboil chicken and not boil it completely. Read recipe instructions carefully, in order to understand what you must do, for a lot depends on the boiling chicken part. Not only the flavor, as you might think. But also the texture and look of the dish. As cooking is an art and to full justice to it, one has to cater to all the facets of it.