HOW TO GRILL BONE IN CHICKEN BREASTS

From my favorite helper: Cooks Illustrated, a visit to their website is a must.
Brine if you have the time, then cook over a two-level fire and cover the breasts for most of the cooking time--but not with the grill cover.
The Problem
Unfortunately, "properly"--as in "properly cooked"--can be a hard adverb to live up to. A chicken breast is thick, it's got a bone to contend with, and it needs to be thoroughly cooked right to the bone, all while the skin simultaneously gets nice and crisp without burning.
The Goal
When properly grilled, bone-in chicken breasts can be particularly tasty, with a kind of meatiness often lacking in boneless breasts. So we set out on a quest for properly grilled bone-in chicken--one with a juicy, evenly cooked interior, a nicely seared, crispy skin, and a robust grilled flavor.
The Solution
Start by brining the chicken in a salt/sugar solution, then grill over a medium-hot two-level fire, which allows for cooking directly over the coals for high heat and to the side of the coals for indirect heat. We placed the chicken breasts over direct heat to sear both sides, then moved them to the slightly cooler part of the grill to finish cooking. This produced a nice exterior, but we were still struggling with a somewhat dry interior. Covering the chicken for part of the cooking period gave us moist, thoroughly cooked chicken with a beautifully seared outside. But now the chicken had picked up an "off" flavor, imparted by the resinous buildup on the cover of the grill. The solution? Use a disposable aluminum roasting pan instead.
list of recipes:
• Grilled Bone-In Chicken Breasts
• Spice-Rubbed Grilled Bone-In Chicken Breasts
• Grilled Bone-In Chicken Breasts with Barbecue Sauce
• Basic Barbecue Sauce
• Barbecue Sauce with Mexican Flavors
• Barbecue Sauce with Asian Flavors
To find these recipes visit their website: www.cooksillustrated.com. To busy to cook
call us for your next event.