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Hello, my Insiders!
This week’s recipe is one of those quiet achievers: not flashy, not complicated, but exactly the sort of thing that makes everyday cooking easier and more delicious. A chicken breast recipe might not sound especially exciting at first glance, but when it gives you juicy, tender, deeply flavorful chicken in well under an hour, I think it earns its place very quickly.
Dry brined chicken breast works as both a recipe and a foundation. You can serve it exactly as it is, warm from the oven with a simple side, or slice and use it in salads, grain bowls, wraps, sandwiches, and all sorts of quick meals through the week. It’s adaptable, reliable, and a very good reminder that basic recipes are often the ones we come back to most.
Below, there’s more chicken inspiration in From the Archives if you want to build out your repertoire. Plus I’ve got a great little kitchen recommendation, and a quick thank you to the many of you who took the time to email me after the last issue, about your steam oven brands and kitchen renovation decisions. Your responses have been so generous.
Happy steam oven cooking, see you in a couple of weeks.
Emily x
Fast & Easy Dry Brined Chicken Breast
This recipe is all about taking a very familiar ingredient and making it genuinely better with minimal effort. A short dry brine gives the chicken breasts more flavor all the way through, and the steam oven helps them cook quickly while staying juicy and tender.
What I especially love about this dish is its flexibility. Once you have a method like this in your back pocket, it becomes endlessly useful: serve the chicken as a simple main, slice it for sandwiches, tuck it into wraps, or add it to salads and rice bowls for easy lunches. It’s a true base recipe, and the kind of thing that can make everyday cooking feel interesting and pleasurable.
From the Archives:
If this week’s chicken recipe speaks to a love of practical, high-reward cooking, these other recipes are excellent companions:
A great basic roast chicken dinner, and one of those foundational recipes that can carry an entire meal with very little fuss.
Another 30 minute wonder, this one with bolder, spiced flavor and all the weeknight-friendly appeal of a fast steam oven dinner.
This is about as basic and flexible as chicken breast gets, with a lovely texture and a method that’s especially handy when you want beautifully even results.
A Thing I'm Loving
Today’s feature recipe calls for ground bay leaves, which can be annoyingly hard to find ready-ground unless you have a very well-stocked spice shop nearby. They’re easy to grind yourself from whole, though, if you have the right equipment! A mortar and pestle does the job nicely, but if you don’t have one a small grinder is a great option, and one of those surprisingly handy kitchen tools that earns its keep very quickly.
If you want the easiest option, this electric grinder is simple and convenient to use. If you’d rather go low-tech, this manual grinder is inexpensive, takes up barely any room, and is a great little tool to keep tucked in a drawer for jobs exactly like the bay leaves.
Thank You
A huge thank you to everyone who emailed after my last journal about steam oven brands, appliance choices, and renovating a kitchen. I received so many thoughtful, detailed replies that I haven’t been able to answer them all yet! Please know I have read every single one and I’m incredibly grateful for the time and care you took in sharing your experiences.
It was fascinating to hear not just which steam ovens you chose, but why you chose them, and what has mattered most once you’ve actually lived with them in your kitchens. I’ll report back in a near future issue of Insiders with what I decided on, and why. And I’ll keep you posted on progress of our kitchen build!
Ask Me Anything (AMA)
This is your best opportunity to ask me anything you like about steam oven cooking.
I continue to answer some AMA questions via email, but my goal is to respond to more of them as articles on the Steam & Bake website. This makes the answers easier to search and refer back to if the same questions come up again. Whenever a new article is published in response to an AMA question, I’ll let you know here in our Insiders journals.
If you have a question, big or small, please email it to [email protected]. Be sure to include INSIDERS AMA in the subject line so I can easily collect and review all submissions.