You Can Wait To Peel Off The Fat-Soaked Chicken Skin

Here’s a new twist on chicken: the fat content of chicken meat is the same whether you cook it with the skin on or off.

The membrane under the chicken skin deflects melting fat so it can’t be absorbed by the meat. At the same time, the skin and membrane prevent moisture from evaporating from the meat, giving you a juicier, tastier piece of chicken.

This concept doesn’t apply to red meat, though. When you’re dealing with steaks, chops or roasts, the membrane has been ruptured during butchering, so there is no protective factor. Even worse, the fat travels into the meat during cooking, increasing the fat content of the lean portion.

So when you roast, bake or broil chicken, you can leave the skin on during cooking, if you can resist eating that crispy skin. (If you’re like the rest of us mere mortals, you might do better to pull the skin off, season the chicken, then cover it with aluminum foil to keep the moisture in.)

But trim all visible fat from meat before cooking to reduce fat. Roasting, broiling and grilling very lean meats can produce a tough product if you overcook them, so experiment with moist cooking methods for beef round or flank, like simmering in red wine or tomato sauce for a more tender product.