How to Grill Chicken | Get Cookin' | Allrecipes

There's nothing worse than dried, chewy, burnt chicken on the grill. Well, I have cracked the code on how to get juicy grilled chicken that's tender and flavorful every single time. I'm gonna cover four steps to getting juicy chicken from the selection to the prepping, the cooking, and the serving. What I'm showing you how to grill is the boneless skinless chicken breast because I think it's the most popular cut, the most crowd-pleasing, and it's also very versatile. I also think it can be sometimes the most challenging. When I'm choosing my boneless skinless chicken breast I really like to choose something that is from the more hormone-free organic natural selections if you can because they're just going to be a little more tender and usually a little more smaller in size. I also love choosing the organic chicken because it just has a more natural kind of pink color. To me that signifies a little more freshness. Some of these that are just more commercialized just don't look quite as appealing. People are gonna get mad that I'm not rinsing my chicken. I only rinse my chicken sometimes or wash it as you say. If it's like really slimy or packed in like a bunch of juice, but this is pretty clean and dry on its own. So the first step is to just kind of trim it and clean it up. So I'll just kind of trim off these little end pieces. These are just going to burn on the grill anyway. What we're looking to do in this step is to create a chicken breast that is more uniform in size. So you'll notice it's just the natural way they're shaped. There's a fat end and a really skinny end. If this skinny end is really long, like on this one, I'm going to go ahead and just trim that off and save it for stir fry or stock or something like that. It's just going to create a better experience on the grill. So I just like to keep Keep the same shape of the chicken and just kind of cut off that little tail end. A lot of what I'm teaching today you can also do with a bone-in piece of chicken breast. The main thing to remember when you're cooking with bone-in versus boneless is that it's going to take a little bit longer to cook. If you still have one end that's significantly larger, what we want to do is try to get it to a little more of a uniform thickness. So I'm just going to kind of pound this end to match the thickness of this end. And now you see it's just a lot more uniform in thickness. So the purpose of that is to promote even cooking and also it tenderizes it just a little bit more. Chicken breasts are really low in fat so it takes a lot to kind of keep them tender. You know fattier cuts of meat as it cooks that fat kind of permeates through and kind of you know softens it up keeps it really moist. We have to kind of help that along. So even though it's Large all the way through, it's even now. That's what we want. It's worth this extra two seconds to do at home, okay? Part two of the prepping stage is marinating. Now, because chicken breasts are lower in fat, they lack a little bit of flavor. When you're talking about burgers and steaks, they have a higher fat content, so they can easily be just seasoned on the outside and thrown directly on the grill. With chicken breasts, we're not gonna do that. I think marinating is... Key. And when it comes to marinating, I like for it to all happen in a plastic bag. I think it is key to maximizing the efficiency of this process. And that's because air can't get inside. Once we create this marinade in here, we're going to squeeze out all the air and it just allows for it to happen faster and more effectively. If you don't remember anything else from this episode, remember this formula. I want you to remember kind of the concept and not necessarily the specific ingredients. So to me, a perfect marinade consists of five elements. The first is something salty. I usually stand at the refrigerator with my bag of meat open and I just start pouring stuff in, but I'll Tone it down a little bit. So I always first look for something salty. So for me, I'm just going old school classic here. A little bit of soy sauce and Worcestershire, but you could also do something like liquid aminos or fish sauce, or even just like the brine from pickles or capers, you know? This is when having that condiment door stocked up really comes in handy. It's also a way I just kind of use stuff up. Okay, so I'm going to go in with a few tablespoons of Worcestershire and then a couple tablespoons of soy sauce. I am doing the lower sodium. I don't like to add my salt, my literal salt, in at this step because sometimes I think it makes the meat a little tough. I like to season the salt just before it hits the grill. That's the salty. The second component would be to balance that out with something sweet. So for me, it's almost always honey. And the sweet serves an important purpose here. Also, besides flavor, it's going to help create that caramelization on the grill. So that's why a piece of grilled chicken is a lot more flavorful than just a plain one baked in the oven. So for me, it's usually honey. It's just easy. I always have it. But another good choice would be maple syrup or brown sugar. Salty sweet acid. The acid is very important. It also helps tenderize and kind of break down, you know, the tissue in the meat. But you have to be careful with the acid because too much of it can actually cook the meat. If you think about ceviche where it's cooked, where it kind of cooks the outside of the fish with, you know, a lot of citrus, we're not trying to cook anything. We're just trying to flavor and tenderize. So I'm going in with a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, probably the juice of a whole lemon. Other good choices here are vinegars, like your rice vinegar, your red wine vinegar. You could also add wine as an acid, sometimes salad dressings. Another acid that I usually always add is some mustard. This just adds great flavor, so I go in with about a tablespoon of Dijon. Fourth component is fat. If you think about a salad dressing, it does have a fat to balance out that vinegar usually in it, so I'm adding in some just plain olive oil. This also helps because that chicken is so lean, so we need a fat in there to keep it moist. You could stop there, but I think the fifth component is also important, and that's just your flavorings, your aromatics, your seasonings. This is where you do you, boo. For me, it's always garlic, about two or three cloves. The smaller your garlic is chopped, the more flavor it has, so I love pushing it through a garlic press. I can just do like some lemon pepper, a little ginger, a little onion powder, you could also just chop up some onion if you've got remnants left in your fridge, chili peppers would be good to add, and then herbs. That's the formula. Salt, sweet, acid, fat, and flavor. Now you've got to get it all up in there. We haven't even dirtied a bowl yet, people. Now after I toss it, I like I like to squeeze out any extra air. An important part of the marinating process is time. The longer you have, the better, okay. I love at least four hours. If you're going to cook that night, prep it up in the morning. Even better if you can do it the night before. You just know this is going to be flavorful. If you do not have the time, something you could do is kind of make little slits in the chicken to allow that marinade to, you know, seep in more or pierce it with a fork before you put it in the bag. If you don't have time, don't skip this step, okay. There are ways around it. And then we're just gonna leave it in the fridge. Till it's time to go grill! Lucky for you I did one. Same exact measurements. So now get yourself some tongs, get yourself a pan, and hit the grill. I'm going gas grill because it's just the easiest, it's really easy to control, it doesn't take as long because you don't have to set up the coals, but there's one main point when it comes to the actual grilling and that is for me. Start high and fast and finish lower and slower. So that's what I do, I get my grill fired up. If you are doing this on a charcoal grill, you'll want to set up a direct heat section and an indirect heat section. So you'll want to push all your coals to one side, get one side really hot, and then you can move it to an indirect side. When you're working with a gas grill, it's just a simple turn of a knob. You wanna get your grill real hot. Once your grill is hot you want to oil the grates. This is going to prevent the sticking. Again that chicken does not have a lot of fat in it. I like to kind of get an old towel that's clean of course. Put some oil down on it and using your tongs just run them over the grates. It's so lean it doesn't have that fat to help it keep from sticking. You could also just take a heat proof brush And brush the grates and then on goes the chicken. You want to put it presentation side down first. I like to put it down a little bit at a diagonal so I can make those beautiful cross hatch marks that you love. Earlier I told you I like to finish the salt part when it's on the grill and so that's what I'm going to do now. Just a little sprinkle just for some extra flavor. You want to be careful for flare-ups. Because we don't want to really burn the outside. I think a lot of mistake people make is they cook the outside before the inside is cooked and that's why you end up with this you know jerky style exterior to your grilled chicken. Chicken also has an internal thermometer that will tell you when it's time to move it. If it sticks a little bit to the grates it's not ready to be touched. But since it's so high it's going to happen kind of fast so to get those cross hatches we're going to take it from one diagonal At this point, I'm going to crank the heat down a little bit. Look at that. Okay, once they're flipped, this is when I like to add a little of the marinade. It'll have time to finish cooking. This is just extra flavor. Now you want to move it off the direct heat. Now I like to close it and just maintain your grill temperature to about like medium. So what would be like the equivalent of like 325 to 350 in the oven. This will climb up pretty fast after you close it. The main thing here is you don't want to overcook it, so if you need a little extra insurance, let's take our thermometer. Close. We want to get to like 162 to 165. Just maintain the temperature and let it cook without burning on the outside. For funsies, I'm throwing on a piece of chicken that's breaking all the rules. An unpounded, huge piece of chicken, salt and pepper, no marinade, high heat. The final rule, and this is just as important as the actual cooking process, is when they're done you have to let them rest. You've worked so hard to keep those juices in, let them live. Gorgeous. I'm going to kind of tent it to keep it warm. We're going to let it rest and I'm going to show you the fourth and final step on how to serve it up. While this chicken is going to be juicy enough to eat without a sauce, I'm gifting to you the perfect sauce for grilled chicken or anything off the grill for that matter. And guess what? You don't have to cook it. I give to you my Italian salsa verde. This is like the Italian version of a chimichurri sauce and it's so easy. You just mix it all together, okay? You don't have to use a food processor, but we're saving time. And I'm also going in with a couple of green onions, couple tablespoons of capers, couple cloves of garlic, a little squeeze of anchovy paste or a couple of filets of anchovy. And you want to pulse this up until it's really fine or you can just chop it up really finely. That's what you want, just super finely chopped. Now we transfer it to a bowl. Okay, so then you just stir in the remaining ingredients, crushed red pepper, and then this has a really nice bright lemon flavor, so you wanna use a couple teaspoons of zest and a couple tablespoons of juice. A little splash of red wine vinegar, and that's it, you just stir in the olive oil. Oh man, that's so good. It's just so fresh and bright, okay? The moment you've all been waiting for. Time to serve up the perfect juicy chicken. Here's what it looks like after it's taken its little nap. It's not swimming in a puddle of juice but it has you know rested a little bit so we know that the juice is still inside the chicken that's a good thing. You can tell how moist it is and you saw how easy it was to cut so we know it's tender. How does it taste? It's so good it's so tender it's flavorful it's the perfect piece of grilled chicken and here's how you can create the perfect bite with the perfect piece of grilled chicken. I just want to show you what happens when you break the rules. This is the chicken that broke all the rules. This was not made even to start with, it was cooked at the higher temperature until it was fully cooked through. No juice. Follow my four steps to grill chicken and I promise it will be perfectly juicy every single time. I think that's why people say they don't like chicken breast because they don't know how to cook a chicken breast. OK. So y'all need to get together and watch this lady's TV. Take the lesson. Right? Take a lesson.