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[What do I have to do to grill perfect chicken?]

Next to hot dogs and hamburgers, Americans grill more chicken than any other meat.  Unfortunately, most Americans grill chicken like I used to--chicken that is black on the outside and still pink next to the bone. When I took an interest in learning how to become a better griller and I did some reading on the subject and asked some experts on the BBQ mailing list some questions, it became pretty obvious that I was grilling chicken completely wrong. Grilling perfect chicken is not rocket science. Believe me, if I can grill perfect chicken, so can you. So follow along and let me help you become a master griller of chicken.

[I see pictures of perfectly-grilled chicken in magazines and cookbooks. Why can't I get chicken to look like that?]

Food photography is an art. The photographs you see in magazines and cookbooks are done by 'professional food stylists'. Yes, that's right professional food stylists. These are people who specialize in making photographs of foods appear as perfect as possible. The photo at the top of this page was made not be me, but a professional food stylist. Can you make grilled chicken look as good at this? Yes, after you follow the tips and techniques in this article, you will be able to make chicken as pretty as the legs in the photo above. Will you be able to photograph it and have it look as good? To do that, you will probably need a professional photo studio and four years at the Brooks Institute of Photography.

[How do I get great-looking grill marks on my chicken?]

Most experts on the subject of grilling would define it as cooking directly over a fire, with the item to be grilled above the fire. Grilling is the oldest form of cooking, used long before we had backyard grills (actually, long before we had backyards). Grilling is still used today in many parts of the world as the primary method for cooking food. In the western cultures, however, grilling over a fire has mostly moved outdoors, used more as a form of recreational cooking, then the main way we cook our everyday foods.

Some traditionalists would argue that the only cooking method that qualifies as 'grilling' is when the meat is cooked on a rack directly over the burning coals of a wood or charcoal fire. They would say that if you placed the meat on the rack where it was not directly over the coals and put a lid in place and cooked the meat using the indirect method, then this is not grilling but roasting. For the purposes of this FAQ, we will not be so traditional or restrictive in our definition of the term 'grilling'. We will use the term to cover any cooking we do where the meat, vegetables or fruit are on the meat rack and we have a fire, either gas, wood or charcoal below the grate and with the grill cover on or off.

When meat is grilled, the high heat produces chemical reactions in the outside layers. These reactions cause the surface to turn brown and many complex chemicals to form. It is these chemicals that give us the rich and unique taste we have come to associate with grilling meat. This process of browning is termed the Maillard reaction, named after the food chemist who first described it. The chemical reactions that take place when meat is browned are quite complex. Over 3,500 volatile chemical compounds have been identified as a result of the Maillard reaction.

In the last few years, I have learned ten 'secrets' to grilling perfect chicken. Here they are:

1)  Be organized.

2)  Use a Weber Bar-B-Kettle grill with a dome lid.

3)  Use charcoal (lump or briquettes) for fuel and water-soaked hickory, oak or mesquite wood chips for flavor.

4)  Trim excess fat from the chicken.

5)  Flavor the chicken with a brine, marinade, rub, baste/mop, glaze or finishing sauce, or any combination.

6)  Do not use a sugar or tomato-containing mop or basting sauce on the chicken until just before the chicken comes off the grill.

7)  Use an accurate meat thermometer and remove the chicken from the grill when it is perfectly done—160F in the breast, or 170F in the thigh.

8)  While grilling the chicken, eliminate flare-ups:

by using the indirect heat method and the dome cover on the grill,

by using the direct heat method, but preventing the flare-ups by keeping the heat of the coals at the right level,

by using the direct heat method with moderate heat from the coals but using the dome lid to snuff out any flare-ups.

9)  Don't be in a hurry. It will take some time to get the charcoal going and you'll have to do some preparation before the chicken is put on the grill. Figure 35-45 minutes to get to coals burned down and up to one hour to cook the chicken if using indirect heat.

10)  Keep your grill clean. Nothing will give you nasty-tasting and looking chicken quicker than a dirty grill, with last week's chicken residue caked to the meat rack and last year's rancid grease sitting in the bottom of the grill.

Before I go any further, I'd like to define a few terms. The thing that sits outside on your porch, patio, deck or in your backyard and burns gas or charcoal and on which you cook steaks, hamburgers, chicken and chicken, is not a barbecue, it is a grill.

Here are the tools that I use almost every time I grill:

Spring-loaded barbecue tongs--about 16 inches in length. I like the toothed ends where both tong ends are the same. I don't like the newer ones where one end is toothed and the other is like a little spatula. I use the tongs for moving and adding charcoal as well as adding, moving, turning and removing the chicken around on the grill.

A digital meat thermometer--I like the Polder, which is also available at Radio Shack (Cat. No. 63-1022). This unit has a nice readable display, a long-life AAA battery, and a very sharp and thin meat probe. Best of all, Radio Shack often has them on-sale for $19.95. Don't bother buying their extended warranty. Just keep the probe cord dry, unkinked and undamaged and the unit will give years of trouble-free use. I wash just the solid metal meat probe and never get the armored cable wet. You must also be careful not to let the display be exposed to direct sunlight or let the plastic get too hot as it will melt if you attach the magnetic bottom of the unit right to the outside of the grill.

Tip: My Friend Steve made me a wooden thermometer holder that protects the Polder unit from the heat of the lid. Cut a 3-inch square of 1/2-inch plywood and epoxy onto one side four little round metal magnets. On the other side of the piece of wood, epoxy on for large metal washers, about 1-inch in diameter. When the epoxy has set, you put the magnet side onto the kettle lid and then let the feet magnets of the Polder (or Radio Shack) unit attach to the metal washers. Now you can attach the Polder unit to the lid without melting the case.

Grill brush--to get the grill clean--I like the kind with the brass bristles. The Grill Wizard is also a good grill cleaning brush.

A long wooden-handled large fork and a spatula--are handy for checking doneness, breaking loose meat stuck to the grill and for transferring the cooked meat to a serving platter.

Basting brush and mop--You should have one of each. Both should have long handles. A mop is used for thinner sauces and a basting brush for thicker ones and for honey, butter and oils. These are available in barbecue stores, kitchen shops, supermarkets and discount stores. They are available from $2 to $9. Always slip back the sleeve covering the top part of the mop or brush when you put these into the dishwasher after use. This will clean the top portion of the mop or brush.

Spray bottle--not for putting out grease fires or damping down a flare-up! A spray bottle is ideal for applying thin mops, such as apple juice, beer or wine, which do not contain ingredients that would clog up the sprayer nozzle.

Drip pans--these accessories come in many shapes, sizes and materials.

Cooking pans--nice aluminum, stainless steel or porcelain roasting pans are a handy grilling item for moving meat to and grom the grill.

OK, let's take on these chicken grilling secrets one at a time and go into a little more detail.

A note about buying chicken

Don't expect to make perfect grilled chicken from that old bird that's on sale at your supermarket for $0.49 a pound. There is usually a good reason why a market will sell chicken that cheap and the reason is not that it is a perfect grilling chicken. I have found that buying chicken at my local supermarkets or warehouse store can be a hit or miss proposition. Make sure that the label does not say "stewing chicken" as this is the oldest and toughest of the chickens available--an old layer long past her prime. This type of chicken will make some good stewed chicken or chicken soup, but you don't want to grill this old girl. The label should say "fryer" or "Young Chicken". Talk to your butcher and ask his advice on which chicken brand in his case will give the best grilling results. When I buy a whole chicken, I like to limit the weight to 3 and 1/2 pounds or less. I've found that a general rule is the bigger the bird, the older the bird.

To make the very best chicken, try to get fryers that have never been frozen, and don't freeze them yourself. Buy the chicken the day before you're going to grill it. Freezing the chicken will cause ice crystals to form in the cells of the muscle tissue. When this happens, the cells burst and when the meat is thawed and cooked, a lot of the juices will run out that wouldn't run out if the meat had not been frozen. Unfortunately, the poultry producers have have done some spin on us. They are allowed to transport chickens at a temperature of around 32F and yet not have to call their chicken 'frozen'. However, any meat kept at 32F is going to be frozen.

Some grillers and barbecuers like to use free-range chickens. By all means, if you can find them and they are not priced too high, they are definitely a better chicken to grill than the assembly-line chickens from the supermarkets.  They have a better taste and much less fat.

The point of this entire exercise is to get you the novice griller up to the level of expert. One thing that characterizes an expert chef or griller over the novice is the expert is organized when he or she begins to cook. If you have ever had the opportunity to see a real grilling expert in operation, you will note that he or she is very organized. they have everything they need nearby. So get you stuff together, have everything you are going to need near your grilling station. A table or TV tray set up next to your grill is a good way to proceed. Have all your tools, your mops, bastes, and seasonings on your grilling table and ready to go before you start. If you like to use a water spray bottle for fire control, have it filled and ready to go. Make sure you have a clean cutting board set out and that the knives that you will be using to slice the meat are clean and sharp. Make sure your grill, either charcoal or gas is level and in good working order and set up in a place that is safe and convenient for use. Make sure you have enough wood or charcoal or if you are using a gas grill, make sure your propane tank has enough fuel to cook your meal.

Yes, you can get good results on a gas grill by following one of the cooking methods given below and the section on using gas grills at the end of the document. I personally don't think chicken done on a gas grill ever tastes as good as chicken grilled over coals. I read where one grill expert said that the source of heat does not make a difference. I used to own a very nice gas grill (the one I used to burn my chicken on). I gave it to my son-in-law and got a 22 1/2-inch diameter Weber Bar-B-Kettle Grill. I bought the Weber on sale at Wal-Mart for less than $60, about 1/5th the cost of my gas grill. I couldn't be happier with the Weber. Sure, it's more work to grill using wood or charcoal for the fuel, but heck, that's half the fun--if you want easy, go out to dinner.

The Weber Kettle Grill (preferably 22 1/2" diameter) is, in my opinion, the best grill on the market. It's simple, inexpensive, easy to use and in the hands of an experienced cook, like you can become, will turn out the best grilled foods possible. You can use any good covered grill and accomplish similar results but the Weber gives you lots of control of the grilling process because of its top and bottom adjustable vents. The dome lid is indispensable because we can combine both grilling and smoking to give the chicken that great smoky taste. The Weber kettle will actually let you do some real barbecuing (hot smoking) if you learn a few tricks. I am a competition barbecue cook and am on a competition barbecue team that has cooked at the Kansas City American Royal barbecue contest. Our team uses an $8,000 professional smoker. However, I have smoked chickens on my Weber kettle that were just as good as any chicken our team can turn out our competition smoker.

If you need more grill area, then check out the larger Weber Bar-B-Kettle grill models or do like it did, get a second Weber Kettle grill.

For perfect grilled chicken, using charcoal is the way to go. I don't believe, despite what the gas grill manufacturer's ads say, that you can get as good a tasting product on a gas grill as you can from charcoal. And further, you can get the very best tasting product if you use hardwood chunks rather than charcoal briquettes. Burning wood down to coals is more difficult than using charcoal, and most of us do not have access to chunks of hardwood or we don't want to invest the time and effort it takes to learn how to make and control a wood fire in a grill, so we'll just concentrate our discussion on using charcoal and later in this FAQ, on using gas.

That's a good question. I have made excellent-tasting chicken using supermarket-branded as well as Kingsford briquettes. I have also made excellent chicken on premium brands of briquettes and also on lump charcoal (actual pieces of pure hardwood that are turned to charcoal). So try the charcoal available in your area and use the cheapest brand that gives you the best-tasting end product. Kingsford and many other brands of mass-produced charcoal briquettes contain coal and other ingredients to promote an easy lighting and longer-burning product. Some brands of charcoal briquettes are made from pure hickory hardwood with corn starch (a binder) as the only additive. Some of these brands are: "Holland", "Nature Glo", "Wildfire", and "Kroger". Learn more about charcoal here

Tip: Keep your charcoal briquettes or lump charcoal in a sealed medium-sized plastic trash can. This will keep the moisture out of the charcoal. Using charcoal that has a lot of moisture in it will make starting the charcoal difficult and keeping the fire going much harder. Charcoal briquettes that get wet often fall apart and are ruined.

There are several ways to do this, all easy.

1) Get a charcoal lighter chimney (about $10).

2) use paraffin fire starter sticks,

3) get an electric charcoal starter, and

4) use a gas burner.

I often use the chimney method--it's the slowest but it's also the cheapest. Just two full sheets of newspaper crumbled into a rope-shape and wadded into the base of the chimney starter. Make sure that there is not too much newspaper or you will reduce the air-flow of the chimney and you will not get the charcoal to light. Follow the manufacturer's directions on how to use the chimney (put the charcoal in the top section above the rack, crumpled newspaper in the bottom and light the paper, then 30 minutes or so later, dump the glowing briquettes in the Weber). This method is easy and requires no electricity, gas nor paraffin sticks (also petroleum). If you're in a hurry to get your charcoal lighted, then the gas burner is the quickest method. Your small propane torch will not work, we are talking about a weed burner  type. Or you can set the charcoal-filled chimney (without newspaper) over a gas burner.

To add the necessary and unmistakable taste of hickory, oak or mesquite to your chicken, you must buy a bag of chips of either flavor wood. Don't buy a big bag as the flavor won't last more than about a year. So buy enough for one season. Which to buy, hickory, oak or mesquite? Buy all three and see which one you like best. The taste of hickory is quite different from mesquite and oak is somewhere in the middle. I have found that apple and other fruit wood chips do not add enough flavor during the grilling process to bother with. So I recommend using hickory, oak and or mesquite chips.

Soak a few handfuls of the chips in water for about an hour before you put the chicken on the grill. Distribute the chips as evenly as you can, but don't waste much time doing it. Put the meat on the grill and put the lid in place. Putting flavor wood chips on your charcoal fire and then not putting the lid in place is just wasting the flavor wood chips. These flavor wood chips will give your chicken a wonderful smoky, tangy taste that you cannot get any other way.

You can also soak sprigs of fresh herbs from your garden in water and throw them on the fire. Rosemary, bay, sage, basil, thyme, dill, tarragon, and fennel will all give your grilled chicken an extra flavor dimension.

In using hickory, oak or mesquite chips, it is important that you do not use too many at one time. Adding too many chips to your charcoal fire will cool the fire down too much and the resulting smoldering of the chips will produce soot that will make the outside of the chicken turn black. You will have to experiment as only experience can tell how many soaked wood chips to add to a charcoal fire. For a fire in my Weber Kettle that uses 50 briquettes, I will put about a handful of wet chips on the coals. Remember, it is better to have too few chips rather than too many. When you put the chips on, they will begin to burn slowly and give off a white smoke. Don't worry that the white smoke goes away in a few minutes. The chips will not last very long but they will have flavored the outside of the chicken nicely. You can add a second handful of chips when you open the lid and turn the chicken.

5) Flavor the chicken with a brine, marinade, rub, baste/mop or glaze/finishing sauce, or any combination.

Here we come to the only complicated part of this process. Easy there, like I said earlier, it's not rocket science. You just have to make some decisions and experiment to find the way to make your chicken perfect for you. Remember, what gives me a 'perfect' grilled chicken may not be 'perfect' for you. What I will attempt to do here is to give you some basic techniques to help you grill chicken without burning it and to improve the taste of your chicken, the rest is up to you.

You will not get the perfect grilled chicken if you put it on the grill naked (nothing done to it). Your grilled chicken will be just grilled chicken if you skip this step (albeit not burned chicken). You do not need to do all these steps. I have made great-tasting grilled chicken with just a dry rub. You can also combine these steps.

Brining a chicken is simply submerging the whole bird, or chicken pieces, in a brine for about 12 hours. Be sure to do the brining below 40F, in the refrigerator or in an ice chest under the ice. Why should I brine a chicken? Well, to get the perfect grilled chicken, brining is the way to go.

The brine is mostly water, some salt at a minimum and some sugar and spices and herbs and onions and garlic at a maximum.

The brining process forces water into the muscle tissues of the meat by a process known as diffusion and osmosis. This additional moisture causes the muscle tissues to swell and hold more water. The resulting water in the muscle tissues will make the meat more moist and tender. Any spices, herbs or other flavorings you add to the brine solution will get taken deep into the meat with the water. See section 10.5.4 of the BBQ-List FAQ version 2.0 for more information on brining (brining a chicken is similar to brining a turkey).

As a general starting point, take one gallon of water and add 1 cup of salt (Kosher or non-iodized is best), 1/2 cup of sugar and then the rest is up to you. Sliced onions are nice, a few cloves of crushed garlic add a nice flavor and then there's the spices and herbs.

Try this modified brine from an expert in brining:

O'Reilly's Chicken Brine