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The JUCIEST Sous Vide Chicken Breasts
Sous vide is the best way to make sure you never cook dry, boring chicken breasts again. They're ready in as little as an hour and always perfect, every time. Perfect for meal prepped lunches or easy dinners!
Ingredients
- 3-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- kosher salt, optional
- freshly cracked black pepper, optional
Instructions
Prep
- Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper or your favorite spice blend.
- Add to vacuum seal bag and remove the air and seal, or use a freezer safe zipper top bag and another air removal method.
- At this point, you can freeze the chicken breasts or sous vide immediately. If sous viding immediately, preheat a water bath according to the options below and cook according to the times below.
Sous Vide Time and Temperature Options
- Very soft texture, little moisture loss: 140 degrees F: 2-4 Hours (3-4 if frozen or bone-in)
- Tender and close to “traditional” texture, still juicy: 150 degrees F: 1-4 Hours (2-4 if frozen or bone-in)
- Traditional texture, slightly stringy, more moisture loss: 160 degrees F: 1-4 Hours (2-4 if frozen or bone-in)
To Finish
- Finishing after sous viding is optional for chicken breasts. If you do want to finish, I recommend a pan sear. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat.
- Once hot, add butter or oil. Sear until browned, about 1 minute on each side.
Notes
What if I don't have a vacuum sealer?
If you don't have a vacuum sealer, there are lots of other air removal methods you can use with zipper top, freezer safe bags or reusable silicone bags, like Stasher Bags. Thanks to these methods, a vacuum sealer is more of a convenience thing and I find it comes in handy when I'm batch prepping food for the freezer to sous vide later!Can I overcook the chicken?
The short answer is no, you can't overcook chicken with sous vide! Since the cooking environment is the temperature you want your meat to come to, it's impossible to overcook. Pretty cool, huh? However, if you leave it in the water bath too long, you can over tenderize it and make it a bit mushy. This is why I suggest never cooking chicken breasts longer than 4 hours.Why can I cook chicken at a lower temp than 165 degrees F when sous viding?
The information provided by experts like the USDA around food safety often sacrifices detail in favor of being easy to understand. Which I get! But 165 degrees F isn't the full story. Temperature guidelines are there to make sure you kill bacteria, the big one being salmonella when we're cooking chicken. We want to pasteurize the chicken. Pasteurization is related to both time AND temperature. The reason 165 degrees F is the gold standard is because chicken is instantly pasteurized at that temperature. The lowest temperature I offer for cooking chicken is 140 degrees F. If your chicken is 140 degrees F all the way through for at least 27.5 minutes, it will be pasteurized! And I recommend a minimum of 2 hours to allow for plenty of time for it to get to temperature and be there for far longer than 27.5 minutes. At 145 degrees F you only need 9.2 minutes, at 150 degrees F you only need 2.8 minutes, and at 155 degrees F you only need 47.7 seconds! Pretty neat, huh? To learn more about this, I recommend this article from Serious Eats.A note on searing
If you want to, you can sear them in a skillet with olive oil or butter when they're done, but usually I don't bother.To meal prep for the freezer:
- After sealing your chicken breasts in a vacuum seal bag, you can cook immediately, refrigerate for up to 3 days, or freeze to cook later.
- When you're ready to cook, place in a preheated water bath set to your desired temp from the chart below for 1-4 hours (add an hour when cooking from frozen or for bone-in chicken breasts).
Calories: 97kcal, Protein: 18g, Fat: 2g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g, Monounsaturated Fat: 1g, Trans Fat: 1g, Cholesterol: 54mg, Sodium: 98mg, Potassium: 314mg, Vitamin A: 25IU, Vitamin C: 1mg, Calcium: 4mg, Iron: 1mg
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