Burning Questions

How to avoid burned-yet-raw grilled chicken

 Whenever I make chicken on the grill, it winds up burned on the outside, or raw on the inside -- or both. What's the secret?

A common solution to the burned-yet-raw chicken problem is parboiling, but this approach has always struck me as cheating. It also robs the chicken of the smokey flavor that only comes from prolonged grilling. So this weekend I set out to find the key to grilling chicken on the grill. Here it is: make your grill as much like an oven as possible.

Think about how you cook indoors. Chicken on the bone is either cooked in the oven or in a covered pan on top of the stove; these two methods get it cooked all the way through. Burgers, steaks and chops, however, can be seared in a skillet on the stove top without a cover. That gets the outside of the meat cooked, but leaves the inside rare -- a perfectly acceptable way to eat red meat.

Translate these two approaches to the outdoors. Searing red meat is accomplished on a grill by getting the fire good and hot and cooking directly over the heat source with the cover off. But that approach won't work for chicken because, by the time the inside is cooked through, the outside will be burned to a crisp.

What chicken needs is a steady, moderate heat. Steady heat can be easily accomplished by keeping the grill covered. Moderate heat is a bit more tricky and will depend on your particular grill. If your grill has an internal thermometer, you're in luck. Otherwise you can use a grill thermometer (Taylor sells one for about $10 that will magnetically adhere to the inside of your grill cover). I found that a temperature between 350 and 400 was ideal for grilling chicken.

Working on a gas grill, I turned one of the three burners up to high and the other two to low. I cooked the chicken directly over the low burners and, 40 minutes later, the smaller pieces were ready to come off. The larger pieces needed 5 to 10 minutes more. For pieces that were done but had not been sufficiently browned, I gave them a few minutes over the high burner.

On a charcoal grill, you need to cook the chicken using indirect heat: Pile the hot coals on one side of the grill, and cook the chicken pieces on the other side, that is, don't cook the chicken right over the coals. If, when the chicken is cooked through, it isn't brown enough, move it directly over the hot coals and give it a few more minutes.

So how can you tell when the chicken is done? You can press it to determine that it is firm, you can pierce it to determine that the juices run clear, but the best method -- by a mile -- is to use an instant-read thermometer. Poke it into the thickest part of the piece, avoiding any bones. You'll want white meat to register at 160 degrees, dark meat about 165 degrees.

A few words on technique: Lay the chicken pieces skin side down and leave them alone for at least 10 minutes. At that point, you can rotate them about 45 degrees to get those nice criss-cross grill marks. Then leave them alone again for at least 10 minutes. Only now, when at least 20 minutes have elapsed, should you even consider turning them over.

I've found the best tool for manipulating chicken on the grill is a pair of long-handled chef tongs. Too often, the tongs specially made for grills have sharp edges that can puncture meat and are too stiff to easily open and close; the a pair of 16-inch kitchen tongs found at any cookware shop or restaurant supply store will have scalloped edges that are gentler on meat and the action will have plenty of give.

Seasoning: I started marinating my chicken a few hours before cooking it by placing one cut-up bird plus two extra breasts in a 2-gallon resealable plastic bag along with a few smashed cloves of garlic, a few sprigs of fresh thyme, a few glugs of extra-virgin olive oil, the juice of half a lemon and a few tablespoons of a mixture of salt, pepper and ground cumin, coriander and fennel seeds. I smushed everything together through the bag and refrigeratedit.

If you plan to use barbecue sauce, start the chicken off with a coating of olive oil, salt and pepper. Don't brush the sauce on the chicken until the last 10 minutes or so, otherwise the sugar in the sauce will burn.