The Right Way To Cut Chicken Breast For A Sizzling Stir-Fry

Whether you're eating Thai pad kra pao, Chinese moo goo gai pan, or whipping up an easy chicken stir fry with a rainbow of veggies and cashews, there are few things as satisfying as perfectly cooked, beautifully thin slices of chicken in a stir fry. While it may seem that slicing up a boneless chicken breast is not a big deal, there are a few things you can do to make the result much more tender and the experience safer. Apart from observing good knife technique, the ideal way to cut chicken breast for a stir fry is to cut even, relatively thin slices (about ¼-inch thick) mostly across the grain. 

How this is accomplished is worthy of fairly detailed discussion. Firstly, raw chicken breast should be handled as little as possible: Try to keep its contact limited to your hands, the knife blade, and the cutting board. Secondly, any raw meat (but especially chicken) can be a little wobbly and want to slip out of your fingers — a definite liability when proximal to fingers and a sharp object! Placing the breast on a small plate in the freezer for up to 15 minutes before cutting will not only stabilize the protein but allow for more precision slicing.

So, what's so important about slicing across the grain? Every cut of meat, just like every slab of wood, has a grain; they even (sort of) resemble each other. In animal protein, these grains are made up of long strands of muscle fiber. Cutting perpendicularly against these grains makes for more tender meat, because you're shortening the length of these muscle fibers and thus reducing the amount of chewing necessary to break them down. 

It's not super hard to identify the grain of a chicken breast. If you look closely, you'll see strands running lengthwise across the meat. Even closer examination will reveal that, unlike steak, the grains of a chicken breast don't all run in the same direction. There's no need to worry; while cutting mainly across the grain will result in tender stir-fry chicken, cutting rigorously across the grain might actually make it fall apart. Also, you want to slice the meat reasonably thinly for the best results, but not so skinny that the raw meat disintegrates before it even hits the pan.

The rest you should know about slicing chicken breast the right way for a stir fry has to do with cutting technique — and it's a skill you should master early. First, start with a sharp knife. It's understandable that a razor-sharp cutting edge is a little intimidating, but know that dull knives are actually far more dangerous: The more you have to bear down to get the job done, the higher the risk of the knife or meat slipping and the blade going into your fingers instead.

Speaking of, there's a way to orient your fingers that deters accidental slicing. Never lay your fingers flat when steadying the cut of meat while cutting; curl them slightly instead, so that the flat side of the blade only brushes past your knuckles rather than your fingertips. This will not only allow for a more stabilized chicken breast, but perfectly even slicing. Now all you need is to learn these five basic knife cuts that will make you look like a master chef.