Tips to avoid both fat and calories when cooking with chicken

Choose breast meat. This is the leanest part of the bird and has less than half the fat of, for example, thigh meat.

Remove the skin. Forty percent of the fat in poultry is attached to the skin and therefore can be easily removed. This is in contrast with other meats, where the fat is dispersed throughout the meat and not so easily removed. One point, though. If you're broiling or baking or grilling chicken, leave the skin on until you're finished cooking; otherwise the meat will lose too much moisture and become tough. Tests show that the meat cooked with the skin retained its moisture and was startlingly more tender than the meat cooked without the skin.

Roast, broil, poach, or grill chicken instead of frying it.

Substitute low fat dairy products in recipes. Use yoghurt or light sour cream instead of sour cream, and non-fat milk instead of regular milk. To be honest, the taste isn't as rich, but if you're watching calories and cholesterol, these substitutions make a substantial difference. For example, plain low fat yoghurt is 122 calories per cup and light sour cream about 360 calories, while the same amount of regular sour cream is 440 to 454 calories. Non-fat milk is 80 to 90 calories per 8-ounce glass, while whole milk is 150 to 160 calories.

Replace oil or fat in marinades with fresh lemon or lime juice, or with wine or vinegar.

Broil with wine instead of butter.

Take advantage of non-caloric pan sprays.

If you're really counting every single calorie, you may want to choose Cornish hens rather than the older broilers and roasters. Cornish hens and broilers are young birds and they bear the same relationship to the older roasters that veal does to beef: the younger the animal, the lower the fat content. For comparison, the white meat of a Cornish is 35 calories per ounce of cooked meat; the white meat of a broiler is 45 calories per cooked ounce.

For low salt chicken diets:

Avoid prepared sauces such as barbecue sauce or ketchup: usually they are high in salt.

Season chicken with foods that are naturally high in potassium, such as tomatoes, citrus, raisins or bananas. When you eat foods high in potassium, you don't miss the sodium so much. Tomato paste, by the way, is very high in potassium, and does not have as much added salt as most prepared or canned foods.

Season foods with garlic, onion, wine and a variety of herbs and spices. Again, you'll miss the sodium less.

Trick your palette by cooking with your own flavored vinegars. Use a cup of whichever fresh herb you can find, such as tarragon or mint or dill, for two cups of plain white vinegar and then add a garlic clove or twist of lemon peel. Store in a screw top jar for several days and if you want it really strong, leave it for a week. You might taste it along the way to see if it's too strong. Finally, strain it and pour into a sterilized bottle and seal.

Season chicken with concentrated homemade chicken broth. Make chicken stock (omit the salt), boil it down until it's concentrated, and then freeze it in ice cube trays. Use individual cubes to intensify the flavor of casseroles or stir fry dishes.