Juicy breast in chicken curry

When cooking chicken curry, I often sautee the chicken in high heat with the masala gravy and then lower the heat and cover the pot until the chicken releases a considerable amount of juice. Only then do I add hot water. I've only done this with leg and thigh pieces so far, and they turned out fine. But if I do the same with breast pieces, they turn out dry. Should I not let the breast pieces release their juice into the curry and add water directly? Or is there some other trick? How do I get the breast pieces in a chicken curry to be juicy?

This is a subject I kind of obsess over, so apologies in advance if this answer gets a little long.

Over many years, I've tried all sorts of different things to get the perfect chicken breasts in my curries. From Brining, to marinades, barbecuing the meat, cooking it in the oven, under the grill (broiler), searing it in a pan... you name it, I've probably tried it. The secret to juicy chicken breasts in curry ultimately comes down to one, main thing... don't over cook it.

The cooking technique you describe, where meat is cooked in a relatively dry sauce until it releases it's own juices, is called "bhuna" in India. It's a technique that works best with darker meats, such as Chicken thighs or Lamb. It can also work with leaner meat such as Chicken breast but you have much less room for error before the breast becomes overcooked and dry. There are a few changes you can make to your current method, to make it less likely to result in dry breast meat.

First of all, leave / cut the Chicken breasts into larger piece. Rather than bite sized pieces, it should be "fill your entire mouth" sized. I typically cut breasts like the picture below. I slice the thin end of the breast off, and then cut the rest of the breast down the middle into two pieces. I then cut these pieces into smaller pieces, the number of which depends on the size of the breast. You want the piece to be roughly cube shaped. Or to put it another way, as thick and wide as they are deep.

The next step would be to bhuna the chicken but to not overcook them. This ultimately comes down to experience. The more you cook the chicken, the more juice it will release but if it releases too much water, or worse yet, it stops releasing any more liquid, then the chicken is overcooked. You can remove a lot of the guess work, as well as accelerate the process of gaining experience, by using a probe thermometer. I would highly recommend getting an instant read probe thermometer. In the UK, £20 will get you a very decent one.

As you cook the chicken, measure it periodically. The temperature I'd recommend aiming for is 67°C. At which point I'd remove it from the sauce and rest it on a plate, covered with a cloche or upturned bowl. As long as the Chicken stays at 67°C for 3 minutes, it's just as safe to eat as if you cooked it to 74°C at which point the meat is instantly pasteurised but it will be much juicier. For more information on this point, please refer to seriouseats.com's article on Sous Vide Chicken Breasts.

The next step of your technique is adding boiling water... which I'd advise against. Again, if the chicken is already cooked, I recommend that you take it out of the sauce before adding water. If the chicken isn't fully cooked, I'd add water but not boiling water. I heat / let the water cool until it is no hotter than the sauce itself. This is in order to prevent the sauce temperature suddenly rising, which can rapidly overcook the chicken. The primary purpose of this added water, is to adjust the masala / sauce to the desired consistency. You shouldn't add more water than is needed and then reduce it... at least not whilst the chicken is still in the pan.

Here are some other things that you can do to get more tender, juicy meat in your bhuna style curries.

1. Massage the meat.

I heard this tip from an British Indian chef who trained under Heston Blumenthal. He said that before marinading your chicken, your should gently massage the meat until it begins to release liquid. This both tenderises the meat and makes it absorb the marinade more readily.

2. Basic Marinade.

When I cook chicken curry, I always begin the chicken preparation in the same way. I add turmeric, garam masala, and kashmiri chilli powders to the meat and rub it in until the meat is thoroughly coated. This means that the spices have direct contact with the meat. The next thing I do is add my garlic and ginger pastes, and rub them all over the meat. This is my basic, quick marinade. Once the chicken is in this marinade, I cover the bowl and put it back into the fridge. As the marinade doesn't contain anything acidic, it can be left overnight without risk of the meat becoming chalky. If I only plan to marinade the chicken for a couple of hours or less, I will also usually add just enough natural yoghurt to coat the meat... when I take the chicken out of the bowl, there should be a coating of marinade in the bowl rather than a puddle.

One other ingredient you can add, which can really work wonders, is some green papaya paste or powder. Papaya contains an enzyme that denatures the protein in meat, making it less able to contract when it is cooked, preventing the muscle fibres squeezing out liquid and therefore more producing more tender, juicy meat. But like acidic ingredients, excursively long marination times when using Papaya, can lead to chalky, dry textured meat. Just FYI, the Papaya paste doesn't smell very nice but once the meat is cooked, you won't smell or taste the Papaya.

Another ingredient that I may or may not add according the marination time, is salt. Salt draws moisture out of meat. This initial moisture extraction takes time though. So if you add salt but only marinade for about hour or less, the salt doesn't have enough time to really work it's way into the meat, and season and tenderise it. It just makes the marinade salty. If you leave the marinade for long enough though, the moisture that is drawn out by the salt, will be reabsorbed into the meat. So if you do want to season the chicken, I'd recommend only doing it for longer marinations.

3. Brining.

Brining can be done in relatively short periods of time, as well as over multiple days (depending on the meat). Brining can result in juicer, more flavourful chicken breast but it's really a marginal gain compared to just cooking the chicken the right way. If you want to learn move about this, then I can cover it in the comments or maybe another question.

4. Use a different technique entirely.

Bhuna has a time and a place. If want a Bhuna, I usually stick to bone-in thigh meat but if I particularly want chicken breast, I Bhuna the sauce. By which I mean I cook the sauce on a fairly high heat, allow it to caramelise and catch slightly on the bottom of the pan, and then de-glaze the pan with the sauce itself or even a small amount of water. Once the sauce is fairly dry and the oil has separated, I add water until the sauce is the desired consistency. Then I bring the sauce to about 70°C, add the chicken breast pieces, and poach them in the sauce. Once the chicken measures the right temperature on my probe thermometer, I take it out of the sauce and rest it so it can finish cooking using the "carry over" heat. When the chicken has been massaged, marinated, and cook as I have described, it will usually result in chicken that is not only very tender and juicy but also chicken that stays tender and juicy when I reheat the leftovers in the following days.