Short directions

I've put in a lot of description below to make everything as clear as possible, but it's really a dead simple recipe:

1. Season the chicken with salt and honey or sugar, plus herbs and spices of your choice
2. Marinate for 48 hours
3. >Wash off surface salt from the chicken and soak to de-salinate
4. Poach or bakw the chicken.

Detailed directions

Everything you need to know about making torihamu, step by step!

Step 1: Prepping and marinating the chicken

1. Trim off any fat or sinews on the chicken breasts. You may want to cut them in half if they are much bigger than half a pound each.
2. In a sturdy ziplock bag or vacuum sealing bag, put in the amount of honey and salt that you need for the amount of chicken breast you'll be processing. For instance if you have 4 breasts use 4 tablespoons of honey and 6 teaspoons of salt. Squish the bag around a bit to mix the honey and salt. Alternatively, you can assign one chicken breast per bag (do this if you want to experiment with different herb/spice flavors), in which case each bag should have 1 tbs. of honey and 1 1/2 tsp. of salt.
3. Put the chicken breasts in, one by one, and squish them around in the bag to completely coat them completely with the honey-salt mixture. At this point you can add the black pepper and/or any herbs or spices that you like to the bag with the chicken. I like dried thyme the best. You can try tarragon, crushed red chili peppers, "steak mix" spices, any of Emeril's best, and so on. For the most versatile and neutral flavor though, stick to just black pepper. Once the herbs and spices are added, squish the chicken in the bag aroun again to coat.
4. Squeeze out as much air as you can, or suck the air out with your vacuum packing appliance. Seal the bags, and leave the chicken to marinate in the refrigerator for __48 hours__ or 2 full days. (You can vary this time, as I'll explain in the Variations below.)

Step 2: De-salinating the chicken

1. Once they are done marinating, take the chicken breasts out of the ziplock bag or bags, and rinse the chicken well under cold running water. Then, leave the breasts to soak in plenty of cold water, for 1 hour. This soaking process gets rid of excess salt, or de-salinates them, while still leaving enough salt in them so that they are nicely flavored.

From the rest, use one of the following cooking methods -- not all!

Step 3a: Cooking Method 1, Wrapped Poaching

1. Once the chicken is soaked, it's time to cook them finally! This is the basic boiling or poaching method that is used in the original torihamu recipes.
2. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Once it's come to a boil, reduce the heat to the lowest setting possible.
3. In the meantime, wipe the excess moisture off each chicken breast thoroughly with kitchen or paper towels. Lay each breast flat on a piece of microwave-safe plastic wrap/cling film. At this point, you can add some herbs or seasonings if you like. For instance, if you marinated your chicken with some thyme, add a bit more thyme here (though the chicken itself will have a subtle thyme flavor from the marinating, so you can just leave it plain if you like).
4. You may want to tie something around the twisted ends for extra security, but this is not totally necessary. To make the chicken really keep a nice round shape, wrap some kitchen twine or string around it.
5. Put the wrapped and tied up chicken into the hot and barely simmering water. Cook for 5 minutes, then put a tight fitting lid on the pot and turn the heat off. Leave the chicken to poach for at least an hour. Some people recommend leaving the chicken in until the water has cooled down, but I prefer to take it out before that.

Step 3b: Cooking Method 2, Unwrapped Poaching

Alternatively, you can skip the plastic wrap and just poach the chicken breasts naked. This results in slightly less finely textured torihamu, but you get an added bonus - the cooking liquid can be used later as stock for other dishes. It's also the most fuss-free method since there's no tying and wrapping.

1. Bring a pot of water up to a boil as with Step 3a, with some salt added -- about the strength you might use for cooking pasta. You can also add some aromatic vegetables here, such as leek, parsley, fresh ginger, and so on for extra taste if you like.
2. Once the water has come to a boil, lower the heat and put in the chicken breasts. Cook for 5 minutes, then put a tight fitting lid on the pot and turn the heat off. Leave the chicken to poach for at least an hour, then take out the chicken and allow it to cool outside of the liquid.

Step 3c: Cooking Method 3, Oven Baking

This is my favorite cooking method, because I think it results in a much finer textured torihamu.

1. Preheat the oven to 120 °C / 250 °F. Yes, it's quite a low temperature - you'll be cooking the chicken slowly, so that it doesn't get dried out. Line a baking sheet with kitchen cooking parchment or a non-stick baking liner, or lightly oil the sheet.
2. After washing and soaking the chicken breasts, wipe off any excess moisture with paper towels. You can roll up the chicken breasts and tie them up with kitchen twine to get a nice round shape, or just leave the breasts as-is. Put the breasts on the lined baking sheet.
   
   Rebecca from New Zealand sent in her photo of a properly tied-up chicken breast. Thank you Rebecca!! (I confess that I usually just wind the string around and around the breast rather sloppily.)
   
   
3. Bake the chicken breasts for 35 to 40 minutes, until the surface is a very light brown. (The exact and squeamish amongst you may want to check the internal temperature with a meat thermometer; it should have reached 73 °C or 165 °F.) Take the chicken out and leave to cool on a plate.