The Reason Your Seasoning Isn't Coating Your Chicken Evenly (And The Easy Fix)

The secret to a flavorful chicken dinner from beginning to end lies in the preparation. It takes a few steps to properly prep chicken, and it all leads to one desirable outcome — a piece of meat that is tender and tasty with a bold flavor that carries evenly throughout. Here at The Takeout, we know how you season your chicken will make or break a great dinner, and so we reached out to an expert for some advice on how to get it right. Ashley Lonsdale is the chef-in-residence at the meat subscription and delivery company, ButcherBox, and she has the inside scoop on how to evenly season chicken — whether you're on a mission to redeem meat's biggest snooze, the boneless chicken breast or you want to infuse even more flavor to Marcella Hazan's 2-Ingredient Roast Chicken.

Lonsdale revealed one major reason your seasoning isn't evenly coating your chicken: you aren't putting the seasoning on the bird the right way. Instead of randomly shaking your usual spices onto the meat, you should be employing a specific technique — one that looks a little flashy once you get it down. "Sprinkle the seasoning directly onto the chicken from above, with about a foot between your hand and the meat," our expert explained. "For some, this may feel like a big distance, but the reason why it's advantageous to season from above is that salt or seasoning can evenly coat the chicken."

You don't need a whole lot of seasonings to make a great chicken dinner; the perfect roast chicken requires salt and time (and a whole lot of butter). Instead, concentrate on how you apply your seasoning mix to the meat to evenly infuse it with the most flavor. The way to perfectly season chicken is to gently coat it in an even shower of seasonings that falls from your fingertips, or sprinkled from the seasoning container in a wide, even path. It's a technique you've probably seen on any number of cooking shows and chef specials, and one that requires a gentle sweeping motion and the perfect distance between your hand and the chicken. As Lonsdale explained: "The distance to pay attention to when seasoning chicken is the delta between your seasoning hand to the meat. About [1 foot] provides enough space for the salt to evenly coat the chicken."

Look for visible gaps in seasoning on your chicken as you're working and go back over them with more seasoning before cooking. Also, make sure you've seasoned all of the exposed area of the meat (both sides!) to get a balanced flavor and to create any kind of golden-brown crust you might envision as you're working.