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Chicken can be cooked to form the basis of many different recipes, like Marry Me Chicken, a Caesar salad or a hearty roast dinner. Chicken can also be cooked by itself and paired with delicious vegetables like sautéed cabbage, honey-roasted carrots and creamy mashed potatoes. I love meal prepping chicken so I always have some on hand for a snack or to add to sandwiches and salads. While most people gravitate to chicken thighs for the taste and texture, I prefer chicken breasts.

Most people have a problem with this variety of chicken because of the way they cook it. Don't get me wrong, if it's cooked incorrectly this meat will be ever so dry and flavourless. Whenever I cook chicken breasts, I always make sure to marinate them using two key ingredients and keep a close eye on the cooking time. My way of cooking this type of chicken has always been the air fryer, but I haven't actually tried any other methods out. With this in mind, I decided to compare the air fryer method with pan-frying and oven cooking. I was surprised to find another method I liked and another one I absolutely loved.

Before cooking each of the chicken breasts, I let them come to room temperature before coating them in olive oil and two flavourful seasonings - Nando's Peri-Peri Rub and Aromat.

As the three chicken breasts were a little on the larger side, they needed cooking a little longer with each method.

Cooking time: 20 minutes

I love cooking chicken in the air fryer, as it's quick, easy and yields juicy results. For this method, there's no need to preheat the air fryer; I just added the chicken to the basket and set it to 200°C for 20 minutes. For smaller chicken breasts, I would usually just leave it cooking for 16 to 18 minutes.

To make sure it is cooked properly, I like to use a meat thermometer to make sure the internal temperature is at 74°C.

A key downside to this method is that space is limited in the air fryer, which means it's difficult to cook more than a couple of chicken breasts in it at a time.

Once cooked, I removed the chicken from the basket and left it to rest for five minutes. This way the meat retains more moisture and flavour than if you were to just slice it immediately.

The chicken had a nice colour to it all the way round; it was evenly cooked, and when sliced, the inside was juicy.

Rating: 8.5/10

Cooking time: 30 minutes

I usually associate cooked chicken breasts in the oven with being dry, but I was proven wrong after testing this method out.

The major downside about this method is the time it takes to preheat the oven and cook the chicken, but the results were impressive.

I preheated the oven to 200°C Fan and left the chicken in there for 20 minutes before checking to see if it was cooking, but it needed an extra 10 minutes.

The steady heat of the oven allowed the chicken to cook gradually and evenly, which kept it moist and tender.

Once cooked, I let it rest for five minutes before cutting. It didn't pick up much colour while baking, which resulted in the chicken looking pale. While it was lacking in colour, the sliced chicken breast ended up being very juicy.

Without the golden brown exterior, the baked chicken breasts had little visual appeal and lacked some flavour. Because of this, it wouldn't hold its own as a main dish on the plate, but baking is a perfectly fine method for meal-prepping chicken breasts to incorporate into other recipes.

Rating: 7.5/10

Cooking time: 10 minutes

For this method, I was a little nervous, as I know that chicken can quickly stick to the pan when cooking at high temperatures.

To pan-fry the chicken, I started by oiling the pan before searing the meat on high heat and then covering it with a lid for two minutes.

I then flipped over the chicken and left it to cook for a further two minutes before adding some water to the pan and covering it with a lid again for five minutes but on a medium-low heat.

Just like with the other two methods, I left the chicken to rest on a plate for five minutes before cutting it open.

Cooking the chicken over direct heat created a delicious golden brown crust on both sides. However, because the heat remains constant and concentrated at the surface, the outside overcooks slightly before the inside reaches the proper temperature. This led to an incredibly juicy interior but a slightly tough exterior, which I didn't mind.

This method resulted in the juiciest chicken, and the only thing that stopped it from getting a 10 out of 10 is that the pan was scorched after cooking, which meant extra time scrubbing and cleaning up.

Rating: 9.5/10