Introduction
You want to know the secret to the juiciest chicken? Temperature control. The kind of down-to-the-degree control that only sous vide cooking can get you. If there’s one dish that shows the most dramatic difference from traditional cooking methods, it’s chicken. Luckily, it’s also one of the easiest dishes to cook, and this guide will show you how to do it step by step.
Sous Vide Chicken Basics
Traditionally cooked chicken cooks hot from the outside in, and it’s very difficult to gauge exactly what temperature it is from the edges to the center. This presents a problem. In order to ensure that the center of the chicken is cooked through and safe to eat, you inevitably have to overcook the outer layers, leading to a dry, stringy texture.
With sous vide cooking, you’re cooking at precisely the temperature you want to serve the meat, which means that by the time you’re done, the chicken is cooked perfectly from edge to edge. What’s more, cooking chicken sous vide actually allows you to serve it at a slightly lower temperature, preserving valuable and flavorful juices.
Traditionally, sous vide chicken consists of a two-phase cooking process:
- Sealing Sealing the chicken in a plastic bag using either a vacuum sealer or the water displacement method and cooking it to the desired final temperature in a temperature-controlled water bath.
- The temperature of the sous vide bath during the initial cooking phase is what determines the final texture of your chicken.
- Searing the chicken to crisp the skin and develop color, flavor, and textural contrast.
If you’d prefer to introduce new sous vide techniques into your arsenal, you can also use the Anova Precision Oven to prepare sous vide chicken. Because of the way we’ve designed the temperature sensors and humidity control, the oven will precisely maintain the cooking temperature you set.
You can choose to bag and cook your chicken in the Precision Oven just as you would with a Precision Cooker, or you can use the oven’s food probe to tell you exactly when the core of your chicken has hit your desired temp.
Just like traditional sous vide, using Sous Vide Mode in the Anova Precision Oven typically is a two-stage cooking process: first, bring the chicken to your desired internal temperature, then sear or broil in the oven to create a flavorful crust.
As anyone who has walked through the meat section at a grocery store knows, there are abundant cuts and preparations of chicken available. Each can be optimized using sous vide cooking, but you’ll want to adjust your time and temp accordingly.
For traditional sous vide techniques, we prefer to cook white and dark meat separately; it’s easier to seal parts than a whole chicken and you can dial in the perfect temperatures for each cut more easily. (Chicken breast tastes best cooked to a lower temperature than chicken thighs, for example.) It is also challenging to properly seal a whole chicken in a bag to cook in a water bath.
If you’re cooking in the Anova Precision Oven, it’s also quite easy to prepare a whole chicken sous vide. You’ll need to split the difference between your favorite doneness temps for white and dark meat, but what you lose in parts-based precision, you’ll make up for in an ultra-juicy texture and the ease of probe-based cooking.
Boneless, Skinless Chicken
Boneless, skinless chicken breast is a great choice for sous vide cooking because it is so easy to overcook using traditional methods. It has no bones or skin to act as insulators and far too often is bland and dry. And while boneless chicken thighs are harder to mess up, the ultra-tender texture achieved through sous vide cooking is hard to replicate any other way.
Because they don’t have insulating skin, we usually skip the searing step for these chicken parts. Instead, plan to use the meat wherever you’d typically use poached chicken breast, such as chicken salad, or braised chicken thighs, such as tacos.
Bone-In, Skin-On Chicken
When you want to serve sous vide chicken all on its own, opt for bone-in, skin-on pieces; you’ll get more insulation when searing so you won’t need to worry about overcooking the meat below. And unlike a steak or a pork chop where blazing high heat is necessary to get a good sear in order to prevent overcooking, chicken can be seared at a more moderate temperature. The heat works towards crisping and browning the skin, but doesn’t penetrate too far into the bird, maintaining juiciness.
Skin and bones provide another advantage: flavor. Chicken cooked with skin and bones intact simply comes out of the bag more flavorful.
If you’re cooking skin-on chicken sous vide in the Anova Precision Oven, you can do so using 0% humidity instead of full steam. This method, which we call Dry Sous Vide, helps to keep the skin as dry as possible to facilitate proper searing after cooking. You can choose to sear on the stovetop or broil using the oven to brown the skin.
Temperature and Timing for Sous Vide Chicken
Just like any food cooked sous vide, the final texture and doneness of chicken is dependent on both time and temperature. With poultry, it is also important to consider food safety when choosing your preferred cook settings.
There is a misconception about what constitutes a safe cooking temperature for meat. You’ve probably heard that in order for chicken to be safe, it ought to be cooked all the way to 165°F (74ºC). Yet sous vide cooking often takes place well below the 140°F (60ºC) mark, in excess of four hours, and our own recommendation for cooking chicken falls in the 145 to 150°F (63 to 66°C) range.
Here’s the thing: Food safety is a function of both temperature and time.
Chicken is considered safe to eat when there is a 7.0 log10 relative reduction in salmonella bacteria. That is, a reduction that ensures that out of every 10,000,000 bacteria living on that piece of chicken to start, only one will survive.
At 165°F (74ºC), you achieve pasteurization nearly instantly. At 136°F (58ºC), it takes a little over an hour for the bacteria to slowly wither to death in the heat. In fact, you can even pasteurize chicken as low as just above 130°F (54ºC), but we don’t recommend it. At that temperature, chicken has a very soft, almost raw texture that is simply not appealing.
It’s important to note that these times represent the minimum safe cooking time for chicken after it has reached those temperatures internally, which can take up to 45 minutes. To be safe, our recommended cooking times add an extra hour to the pasteurization time when chicken is cooked from the fridge or two hours when starting with frozen meat.
Want more details? Dive even deeper into the science behind pasteurization and get full time and temp charts on our pasteurization guide.
The hotter you cook chicken, the more juice it expels. Since we want to keep as much juice in the chicken as possible, it makes sense to cook it at a low temp to keep its moisture intact. But there’s a limit as to how low you want poultry cooked — medium-rare chicken is quite soft and not always desirable.
To find the perfect temperatures for both white and dark meat, we cooked near-identical chicken pieces to temperatures ranging from 135°F (57ºC) up to 165°F (74ºC), measuring the moisture lost to the bag in each sample and tasting the results.
From a quantitative perspective, the differences are pretty dramatic.
Chicken cooked to 150°F (66°C) loses twice as much juice as chicken cooked to 140°F (60°C), though subjectively, both taste plenty juicy. Even at 160°F (71ºC), chicken cooked sous vide is markedly juicier than when cooked via more traditional methods.
Texture also shows a dramatic change as you cook your chicken progressively hotter, and unlike juiciness, it’s a change that’s very readily apparent when you eat it. Just like any overcooked chicken, once you get to around 155°F (68ºC), sous vide chicken breast starts to take on an unpleasant chalky, tacky texture. But again, this is far less than with conventional cooking methods.
You can opt to replicate your favorite sous vide times and temps in the Anova Precision Oven if you’d like.
To slightly speed up the process, you can use the oven’s food probe to tell you exactly when the core of your chicken has hit its target temperature. Or you can really speed up your chicken by cooking with Sous Vide Express. This cooking mode uses a slightly elevated oven temperature to cut cooking time by about half.
However, keep in mind that if you’re cooking chicken to a core temperature below 145°F (63°C) or so, it is best to use traditional sous vide times and temps in order to ensure that the meat has been properly pasteurized.
No matter which method you choose, extended cooking times in the Anova Precision Oven will have the same effect on texture as with a Precision Cooker.
White Meat Chicken
Between 140ºF (60ºC) and 145°F (63ºC) is our preferred temperature range for chicken breast served hot, and we generally aim for the hotter end of that scale. Chicken cooked to 140°F (60°C) has a very tender, extremely juicy and smooth texture that is firm and completely opaque and shows no signs of stringiness or tackiness. It melts between your teeth.
Once you get over the 150°F (66°C) hump, things start to look a little more traditional. The chicken will still be plenty moist and tender, but it will have some of its signature stringiness. This is our preferred temperature for chicken that’s destined to be served cold as a salad.
When you get to around 160°F (71°C), you’re in well-done territory. It’s hard to accurately describe the texture of well-done sous vide chicken. Imagine the texture of traditional roast chicken from, say, your high school cafeteria. Now imagine that the chicken is just as stringy with that tacky texture as you bite down on it with your molars, except it’s also extremely juicy and moist. If you are a lover of traditional roast chicken but have always wished it was more moist, then this may be the temperature range for you.
Timing matters: While it’s tempting to set your Precision Cooker to a given temperature, drop in your chicken breasts, then walk away until you’re ready to eat, it’s not the best idea. After all, it’s still possible to overcook meat with sous vide cooking, but it’s much, much more difficult.
Just as bacterial reduction is a function of temperature and time, the breakdown of proteins within the chicken breast is also dependent on temperature and time. The longer a piece of chicken sits at a given temperature, the more it breaks down and the softer it becomes. Instead of tasting tender, overcooked sous vide chicken gets an unpleasantly mushy texture.
For best results, we recommend never cooking chicken for any longer than four hours.
| Oven or Water Bath Temperature | Probe Temperature | Time | Finished Texture |
|---|---|---|---|
| 140°F (60°C) | 140°F (60°C) | 1 ½ to 4 hours | Served hot: Very soft and juicy |
| 150°F (66°C) | 150°F (66°C) | 1 to 4 hours | Served hot: Juicy, tender and slightly stringy Served cold: Tender and juicy |
| 160°F (71°C) | 160°F (71°C) | 1 to 4 hours | Served hot: Traditional, juicy, firm, and slightly stringy |
We don’t recommend using sous vide express for cooking chicken breast below 145°F (63°C) because it cannot be properly pasteurized without an extended sous vide cooking time.
| Oven or Water Bath Temperature | Probe Temperature | Time | Finished Texture |
|---|---|---|---|
| 155°F (68°C) | 150°F (66°C) | 45 minutes | Juicy, tender and slightly stringy |
| 165°F (74°C) | 160°F (71°C) | 45 minutes | Traditional, juicy, firm, and slightly stringy |
Unlike chicken breasts, chicken thighs and drumsticks are high in connective tissue with robust flavor and a texture that can withstand a bit more cooking. Indeed, at lower than 150°F (66°C), they are nearly inedible, chewy, and tough.
At 150°F (66°C), juices just begin to run clear but tougher connective tissue like large tendons will still be a little chewy. This is a good range if you like a very robust, meaty texture. The chicken cooks up almost like a steak in between 1 to 2 hours.
Once you get to 165°F (74°C), timing comes into play. With shorter cook times, you end up with chicken that is more tender than chicken cooked to 150°F (66ºC) and just slightly more dry. With extended cooking times, up to 24 hours, the chicken begins to fall apart much more readily.
Expelled chicken juices and broken down connective tissues start to collect in the bag, forming a gel which can be subsequently used to form a flavorful pan sauce.
| Oven or Water Bath Temperature | Probe Temperature | Time | Finished Texture |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150°F (66°C) | 150°F (66°C) | 1 to 4 hours | Firm, very juicy, slightly tough |
| 165°F (74°C) | 165°F (74°C) | 1 to 4 hours | Tender and very juicy |
| 165°F (74°C) | 165°F (74°C) | 4 to 8 hours | Fall-off-the-bone tender |
| Oven or Water Bath Temperature | Probe Temperature | Time | Finished Texture |
|---|---|---|---|
| 155°F (68°C) | 150°F (66°C) | 45 minutes | White meat: Juicy, tender and slightly stringy Dark meat: Firm, very juicy, slightly tough |
| 170°F (77°C) | 165°F (74°C) | 45 minutes | White meat: Traditional, juicy, firm, and slightly stringy Dark meat: Tender and very juicy |
Whole Chicken in the Anova Precision Oven
Since whole chickens contain both white and dark meat (duh), you’ll need to choose which style of meat you’d like to optimize when choosing your cooking temperature. If you love ultra juicy white meat and don’t mind pink and slightly tough dark meat, pick a temp in the lower range. If you prefer to have fully tender dark meat and you’re okay with slightly stringy (but still moist) white meat, pick a temp in the higher range.
Either way, you’ll be finishing the chicken in the oven, which will bump up the final serving temp a smidge. We’ve dropped the probe temp down by 5°F (2°C) relative to the chicken parts above to accommodate.
| Oven Temperature | Probe Temperature | Time | Finished Texture |
|---|---|---|---|
| 145°F (63°C) | 145°F (63°C) | 2 ½ to 4 hours | White meat: Juicy, tender and slightly stringy Dark meat: Firm, very juicy, slightly tough |
| 155°F (68°C) | 155°F (68°C) | 2 ½ to 4 hours | White meat: Traditional, juicy, firm, and slightly stringy Dark meat: Tender and very juicy |
We don’t recommend using sous vide express for cooking chicken breast below 145°F (63°C) because it cannot be properly pasteurized without an extended sous vide cooking time.
| Oven or Water Bath Temperature | Probe Temperature | Time | Finished Texture |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150°F (66°C) | 145°F (63°C) | 1 ½ to 2 hours | White meat: Traditional, juicy, firm, and slightly stringy Dark meat: Tender and very juicy |
| 160°F (71°C) | 155°F (68°C) | 1 ½ to 2 hours | White meat: Traditional, juicy, firm, and slightly stringy Dark meat: Tender and very juicy |
Sous Vide Chicken, Step by Step
Step 1
Attach a Precision Cooker to a water bath and heat to your desired final doneness temperature or preheat the Precision Oven to your desired temperature.
If you're planning on cooking and eating the chicken immediately, season generously with salt and pepper. If sealing now to freeze or cook for later, omit the salt and pepper.
Step 2
If vacuum sealing, add to a bag with aromatics if desired. Seal the bag with a vacuum sealer. If using the food probe in the Precision Oven, insert the probe into the center of the largest chicken breast or thigh. If cooking a whole chicken, insert the probe into the breast.
Step 3
Drop the bag in the water bath or place into the oven and attach the probe. Cook according to your desired time and temp or until the probe reaches its target temperature.
Finishing Steps
Remove the chicken from the bag or oven and place it on a paper towel-lined plate. (Reserve the juices in the bag if cooking dark meat chicken.) Pat the chicken very dry on both sides. If you did not season before cooking the chicken, season it now generously with salt and pepper. Remove the probe if using.
Step 1
Place a heavy cast iron or stainless steel skillet with 1 tablespoon (15ml) neutral oil over medium-high heat until shimmering.
Step 2
Carefully add the chicken to the hot oil, skin side down. Use a flexible slotted fish spatula or to hold the chicken down against the corner of the pan in order to maximize contact between the chicken skin and the hot oil and metal.
Step 3
Carefully lift and peek under the chicken as it cooks to gauge how quickly it is browning. Let it continue to cook until the skin is deep brown and very crisp, about 2 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pan.
Step 4
If making a pan sauce for chicken thighs, start by adding a few chopped aromatics, such as shallots or garlic, to the pan. Cook until fragrant, then add a glass of wine or a shot of liquor along with the gelled chicken juices from the sous vide bag. Add secondary flavorings, such as whole grain mustard, if desired.
Swirl in a pat of butter along with chopped herbs and a squeeze of lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper. If the sauce looks greasy or broken, add a few tablespoons of water and stir vigorously to loosen it up and emulsify.
Step 5
Serve the chicken immediately garnished with lemon wedges, extra virgin olive oil, vinaigrette, or pan sauce.
Step 1
Adjust the oven temperature for searing: Turn sous vide mode off and set the oven to 482°F (250°C) with 0% steam using the Top+Rear heating elements.
Step 2
While the oven is heating, brush the surface of the chicken skin with neutral oil.
Step 3
When the oven has reached temperature, return the chicken to the middle rack with the legs facing the back of the oven if using a whole bird. Roast until the chicken skin is golden brown and crisp, 5 to 10 minutes. Keep a close eye on the chicken—the skin can go from perfectly golden to burnt in a short time.
Step 4
Remove the chicken from the oven. Place the chicken pan on a wire rack set in a second sheet pan, then carefully pour the hot drippings over the top of the chicken to help crisp and season the skin. Serve.
A Closer Look at Seasoning Sous Vide Chicken
We recommend seasoning bone-in, skin-on chicken with salt and pepper before sealing it in vacuum bags. Because of its skin and bones, there’s no real risk of the meat curing or becoming unpleasantly spongy with prolonged salting the way there can be with beef or pork. If you’re cooking boneless, skinless meat, you may want to consider salting after cooking if you’re planning on a prolonged cooking time.
Wet brining is entirely unnecessary when it comes to sous vide chicken. Your chicken will come out plenty moist and juicy while also having a more concentrated chicken flavor, as brine dilutes the flavor of the chicken with water.
You can, however, add aromatics to the bag before sealing. Think about what you’d like the flavors of the final dish to be: a few tarragon sprigs and some wheels of lemon for a take on roast chicken or slices of ginger, garlic, and scallions for a cold salad. The key is to avoid excess liquid (doing that means you’ll end up flavoring the liquid with chicken instead of the other way around), and to bear in mind that most spices and garlic will intensify with flavor when added to a sous vide bag.
If using Dry Sous Vide Mode in the Anova Precision Oven, you can further dry out the skin by dry-brining the meat the night before cooking. Add salt and any seasonings to the chicken skin and refrigerate overnight uncovered on a wire rack set in a sheet pan.
A Closer Look at Searing Sous Vide Chicken
Searing sous vide chicken can be a challenge because the skin is quite damp and soggy after cooking in a bag at 100% humidity. The trick is to really go to town drying the chicken and to use a relatively moderate stovetop temperature to sear.
If you’re using the Anova Precision Oven to cook your chicken, you can use Dry Sous Vide Mode. While the skin won’t be completely dry when it’s finished, it’ll be significantly more so than when cooking at 100% relative humidity in a water bath.
Chicken Breast
It can be challenging to make a pan sauce from sous vide chicken breast. Pan sauces require a nice layer of browned proteins on the bottom of your skillet to form their flavor base. With sous vide cooking, the proteins have already coagulated well before your chicken makes its way to the pan, which means that this fond never forms.
The bad news is you can’t make a good pan sauce for sous vide chicken breast. But the good news is that all of that great flavor and extra moisture is already packed in there right where it belongs: in the chicken itself. A sauce is almost superfluous for this reason, though a simple vinaigrette, a drizzle of olive oil, or a squeeze of lemon never hurts.
Chicken Thighs and Legs
If you’re making sous vide chicken thighs and/or legs, you can use the liquid remaining in the bag to build a sauce; it’ll be full of expelled chicken juices and broken down connective tissues.
After searing, add a few chopped aromatics to the pan such as minced shallots or garlic. Cook until fragrant, then add a glass of wine or a shot of liquor along with the gelled chicken juices you reserved from the sous vide bag. Add secondary flavorings like whole grain mustard if desired. Swirl in a pat of butter along with chopped herbs and a squeeze of lemon juice as desired.
Meal-Prep and Make-Ahead Sous Vide Chicken
One of the big benefits to cooking sous vide is that, because you’re portioning food in individual bags, it can lend itself well to meal prep. But there are a few things to keep in mind, especially if you’re planning to reheat your food:
- It’s true that given a high enough temperature (130°F (54.4ºC) or higher) and a long enough time period (several hours), the contents of a sealed sous vide bag should be close to sterile. Rapid chilling via an ice bath followed by rapid reheating should pose no health risks, though we still strongly recommend against it whenever avoidable: it’s not doing any favors for the quality of your chicken.
- Moreover, it takes just as long to reheat already-cooked sous vide chicken to its final serving temperature as it does to cook that same meat from scratch so you really aren’t saving any time by doing it.
- Never chill and reheat any food that has been cooked or held at a temperature lower than 130°F (54.4ºC). These temperatures are not hot enough to destroy dangerous bacteria.
- You can seal seasoned, ready-to-cook chicken parts in sous vide bags and stack them in the freezer. When ready to cook, pop them directly in the water bath or oven and allow an extra hour to fully thaw before you begin timing it for doneness.