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General tips for grilling
chicken
If you want a whole barbecued chicken and don't
want to mess around with all the beer can methods, here are a few simple
tricks to getting grilled chicken perfect. Try this once or twice with nothing more exotic
than coarse salt, cracked pepper and oil. Once you get the technique down, you can explore
rubs, marinades and secret sauces to your heart's
content.
The first trick is that you want to get the
bird as uniform in thickness as possible. For this you need to "spatchcock" it,
which takes all of two minutes. Place the bird breast down on the cutting board and
using poultry or kitchen shears, cut along both sides of the backbone. Remove the backbone,
flip the bird and press down on the breast until you hear a crunch. The chicken is now
roughly the same overall thickness and flattened for the
grill.
The second trick is to brine
it after you get it cleaned up and flat. Put it in a bowl with a half cup of kosher salt and
fill with icewater to barely cover the bird. Stir it around so the salt dissolves.
Let it brine for at least a half hour, but no more than one hour or it turns weird
and mushy.
Take it out of the
brine and pat it dry. Rub it all over with oil (or butter) and season it generously with salt and
pepper.
The third trick is to always start
chicken bone side down. I've read hundreds of recipes where they say to start it skin side
down. They're wrong. If the grill is too hot, and it probably is, the skin immediately
burns black. You have basically ruined the chicken, because the skin is the best
part and you have to scrape it off and throw it away. If you put it on bone side down and the
grill is too hot, you get some fast browning on the bottom, but you can get things under
control before you flip it over.
In a nutshell, the grilling method is
this:
Fire up a large load of quality charcoal on the
left side of the coal basket forming the classic two zone setup. Place a
drip pan on the right where the chicken will cook. Place the flattened bird bone side down
(breast up) over the drip pan. Close the cover and adjust the vents for around 350° - 400°
F
Flip it over when the bottom is perfectly browned
and close the cover again. If your heat is correct, and you listen for it, after a few
minutes the chicken will start to "rain" into the pan. This is the fat melting out of the
skin as it crisps up. Watch it until the skin looks like its done. Temp it deep in the
thigh looking for 165° F or more. Even at 165, there may be some pink on the bones, but this
is not raw meat, it's a result of the process. Not to worry.
If the skin isn't exactly how you like it, move
the bird over the coals for a few minutes, but watch it like a hawk. And please don't put any
sauce containing sugar on the chicken while it's over the coals. You're so close to
perfection, don't ruin it with a burned sugar coating that you have to scrape
off.
Once you master the basic grilling technique for
chicken using only salt and pepper, you can branch out with confidence in your skills. Try
loosening the skin over the entire bird with your fingers and then stuffing fresh
herbs (Rosemary or Thyme), or sausage under the skin, and adding marinades or sauces at
the very end. You are only limited by your imagination.
For the chicken in this photo we marinated in
garlic, lemon juice, rosemary and oil after the bird was flattened (yes, it had already been
brined). We didn't use any smoke chips when it was grilling. The idea was to just use
pure indirect heat and the light smoke from some good lump charcoal. This allowed
the delicate flavors of the lemon and herbs to come through. As a final touch we grilled some
lemons at high heat and squeezed them over the meat after the bird was carved. It was VERY
good.
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