How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

Cutting up a chicken breast properly for stir-fries is easy.

By

J. Kenji López-Alt

Updated September 11, 2023

Muscle Grain Matters

All muscle matter has a grain to it. The muscle fibers align in the direction that they contract. The orientation of your knife to this grain will determine the length of the muscle fibers in an individual slice of meat, which in turn will havea profound effecton how tender or tough that meat is.

Chicken breast is a little different than most cuts of meat you'll encounter, since the grain isn't uniform across the entire chicken breast half. Here's a rough diagram of the orientation of the grain on a boneless, skinless chicken breast:

Diagram depicting the orientation of the muscle grain on a boneless, skinless chicken breast on a cutting board. — The dotted lines roughly indicate the alignment of the muscle fibers.
Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Chicken is also a little different from other meats in that you want to slice notquite100 percent against the grain, because it can end up almosttootender if you do. But you still want to cut at a sharp bias against it.

How to Slice Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

Hold the chicken breast with your non-knife hand, curling your fingertips under your knuckles (so you don't slice them off!), and slice the chicken with long, even strokes into slices about 1/4-inch thick.

Overhead view of chicken breast being cut into slices for stir-frying. — Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

How to Julienne Chicken Breasts for Stir-Fries

If you want slivers of chicken breast to toss into a stir-fry, you cut the chicken breast as you would for slices, but then you take those same slices, stack a few at a time, and slice them lengthwise.

A knife slicing through two slices of chicken breast stacked on top of one another to create julienned strips for stir-frying. — Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Only stack as many slices on top of each other as you feel comfortable slicing. The goal is to produce relatively uniform matchstick-lengths of chicken breast.

Julienned slices of chicken breast for stir-frying on a cutting board. — Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

How to Dice a Chicken Breast for Stir-Fries

If you're making a recipe that calls for diced chicken breast, as in mySichuan kung pao chicken, you'll want to start by slicing the chicken into wider strips.

A knife slicing against the muscle grain of a chicken breast to create larger slices, which in turn will be diced into cubes, for stir-frying. — Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Then cut each of those wider strips crosswise into cubes. If you want to cut up smaller cubes, take each of the wider strips and slice it in half lengthwise, then cut the resulting strips crosswise.