It’s time to kiss chewy chicken goodbye

Chicken salad, that summertime classic, often suffers from Chewy Chicken Syndrome, a pitfall that requires a tightrope walk to avoid.

You want to build the recipe around white meat chicken but you don’t want to overcook it, an easy thing to do given white meat’s leanness. (And if you do happen to overcook it, you might as well kiss it goodbye.)

Accordingly, this recipe for Deluxe BLT Chicken Salad Sandwiches With Basil Dressing mimics the cooking process called sous vide to guarantee the chicken turns out tender. Without going into a lengthy explanation, let’s just say the premise of sous vide is to cook the item at a temperature no higher than the one at which you want it to end up. That way it can never be overcooked. In this case the outer limit for the internal temperature is 165 F (73 C), the heat at which you can be sure that any bacteria have been killed.

Here the chicken is cooked in chicken broth, which deepens the flavour of both the chicken and the broth.

You’ll start by heating the broth to 170 F (77 C), not 165 F (73 C) because the temperature drops quickly with all the chicken in there.

Then cover the pan and pull it off the burner, allowing the chicken to cook gently in the lingering heat of the broth. (To make sure you don’t undercook it, cut into the thickest piece of chicken after it rests for 20 minutes and, if necessary, reheat it briefly to finish the process.)

What puts this chicken salad over the top?

Salting the tomatoes to remove excess water and make them more tomato-y and puréeing the basil leaves in a food processor to make them more basil-y.

Lastly, we borrow one of the features that makes a New England lobster roll so magnificent — serving the chicken salad in a buttered, toasted hotdog bun.