He suggested cutting the breast in half horizontally to make two thin pieces, then topping them with quick-cooking vegetables like mushrooms, zucchini or tomatoes, and roasting everything in a hot oven (or toaster oven).

“Americans call this cut ‘chicken paillard,’ ” said Mr. Ripert, who was born and trained in France. “I never heard that word before I came here.”

I tried out his technique with oyster mushrooms, garlic and curry. It was a snap to put together, so easy I was almost worried. Fifteen minutes later, the kitchen smelled exotic and savory, and I had a supremely juicy and complexly flavored dish. Even though chefs don’t like chicken breasts, they do seem to know how to cook them.

I tried Zak Pelaccio of Fatty Crab next, hoping for something Asian-inspired.

“I don’t cook a lot of chicken breasts,” he told me. But he was able to give me a recipe for Hainanese chicken. At the restaurant he cooks the chicken sous vide but recommended poaching it off the heat in a spicy, fragrant broth at home.

As instructed, I simmered chicken stock with chilies, garlic and ginger, then added the chicken breasts and turned off the heat. While the chicken sat, I blended the same aromatics into a sauce. It was so pungent and enticing that had the cooking gone wrong, I would have been happy eating that sauce on raw chicken.

But in the end, the breasts emerged from their bath tender and just cooked through, an utter delight to eat over rice moistened with the spicy broth.

Image Crispy stuffed chicken cutlets with ham, cheese and sauerkraut. Credit... Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times

Next, I went to Spain via Alexandra Raij from Txikito and El Quinto Pino. She recommended a traditional Spanish dish called flamenquines, in which flattened chicken breasts are stuffed with ham and cheese, then rolled up, coated in egg and bread crumbs and fried. Ms. Raij’s touches were a sprinkling of black mustard seed or caraway in the filling along with an added kick of parsley and garlic in the eggs, a trick picked up from her mother’s schnitzel.