Making Great Grilled Chicken
Hot on the Grill: Making Great Grilled Chicken
Cooking chicken correctly will yield exceptionally juicy results
One of the most common and perhaps least raved about meats on the grill is the chicken breast. It is a staple of the average weekly menu plan in many homes, but it’s also typically considered one of the least exciting. In truth, though, chicken can be a flavorful, juicy main course – so why the bad rap?
Most of the trouble comes in the fact that chicken can be easy to cook wrong, so often people are judging the meat based on their experience eating it. However, if you cook chicken correctly, your opinion of it may start to drastically change and chicken night just might become one of your favorite meals of the week.
The first key to cooking chicken correctly is to take care with the cuts before you put them on the grill. Trim all the fat for healthier cooking; then, make sure all of the breasts or pieces are the same size – preferably from the center to the ends on each piece as well. As mentioned in our last post, having different thicknesses of meat will mean that the thin parts dry out while the thicker parts are still cooking. Even thickness ensures even cooking.
The next step is to carefully monitor cooking progress to ensure that you’re not overcooking. Chicken is extremely easy to dry out, so once it’s cooked it needs to be taken off the grill immediately to keep it moist, juicy and delicious. Obviously follow the recommended cooking times in your Use & Care and use them as a guide, but you need to monitor the cooking progress as well since the cuts might be thicker or thinner than what was used.
A meat thermometer is a huge help in making sure you don’t dry your chicken out, because you can check the temperature and simply remove once it hits 165°F – the FDA’s recommended internal temperature on chicken. If you don’t have a meat thermometer on hand, you can do a touch test, but this is definitely more of an art than a simple thermometer check. To touch test, simply press on the center of the breast; it should be firm, but not hard – hard means that you’ve overcooked.
If at all possible, use one of the two methods above to avoid slicing into the breast to check the center for pinkness. Once you slice the breast, juices will run and the chicken will dry out if you have to put it back on to cook longer. This is true for all meats, but can be especially problematic for chicken, since it dries out so easily.
Between cutting your pieces correctly and monitoring cooking progress closely, you should be able to get a really well cooked piece of chicken without a lot of extra work. Even without any extra marinades or sauces, you should notice a difference in the taste of the chicken itself and find it a lot more appetizing. If you’re still less than wowed, the best thing you can do is add a marinade or a rub to provde some extra imparted flavor to the meat.
If you decide to go this route, try to avoid anything that uses salt, as this is a big contributor to drying meat out as it cooks. If you use salt at all, using it extremely sparingly – again, it’s better if you can leave it out entirely. For marinades, always give at least a few hours for the chicken to marinate in the fridge (6-8 hours is the ideal). You want to let chicken marinate for a long time because the liquid needs time to work into the deep tissue; otherwise, your marinade might not provide the bold flavor you were expecting. For rubs, as is typical, you want to do the rub just prior to cooking to avoid drying the meat out – even when it doesn’t use salt.
Once you’ve pretreated your chicken to your taste, you will still need to follow the first two suggestions above to achieve the results you want. The chicken will be good itself, with the seasoning simply adding more flavor.
Correctly Loading Cooking Plates
Tips & Tricks: Loading Your Cooking Plates Correctly
Have you ever needed to cook food on your grill for longer than expected? The problem may be that you’re overloading the cooking plates, which can cause longer cooking times – it may also affect the quality of your finished plates of food. In this post, we’ll be giving tips on loading your plates correctly to achieve more even results within the recommended cooking times found in your Use & Care manual.
The first key is not to overload the bottom plate – you can’t overstuff your grill with food and expect that it will cook with the same quality and quickness that it would for a regular load. If individual pieces are touching each other on the sides because there so much food on the grill, this will affect your results and take longer to cook because there is more food than the embedded heating element can handle.
A fixed plate grill with embedded heating elements
You also don’t want any edges or sides of the food hanging out beyond edge of the cooking plate. As we mentioned in our feature focus post, the embedded heating elements are designed to provide even heat from the center to the sides of the plate, but food that goes beyond this won’t cook correctly because it’s not coming into contact with the heating element.
The last key to correctly loading your cooking plates is to make sure that the food is all the same thickness – both on individual pieces and the plate as a whole. Since contact grills, by design, cook from both sides, the top plate needs to be touching the food to cook correctly in the time provided. If any piece or part of a piece isn’t touching the top plate, it won’t cook like everything else. For steaks in particular, you won’t get that steakhouse quality center of pinkness – the same issue you have if you don’t turn the meat often enough on a regular grill.
So how do you know how much food to put on the plate to have it cook correctly? A good rule of thumb is that an average serving size equals about 20 sq. in. of space on your grill. If you know the size of your grill, simply divide that number by 20; this will give you a rough estimate of your grill’s serving size. Obviously some foods, like flank or skirt steak for instance, will take up more space, but this formula works as a general rule for things like burgers, chicken breasts, chops and sausage patties.
Pepper to Perfection
Spice Rack: Pepper to Perfection
Pepper is one of the most important spices in the world. Throughout history, it was one of the first spices used; hunts for peppercorns led to exploration of the New World and it was even a form of currency at some points. Today, Spice of Life lists it as the most traded spice in the world, with an average American eating about ¼ lb. per year.
In grilling, peppercorns are a grill master’s best friend. A properly peppered steak doesn’t really need any sauce, dressing or marinade. Peppered steak and chicken regularly appear on menus around the world and being able to make these successfully at home can bring sophistication and refinement to any dinner table. In addition, the Food Lover’s Companion states, “Because it stimulates gastric juices, it delivers a digestive bonus as well.”
The key to good peppering is to know the difference between the various types of peppercorns and the flavors they provide. The Food Lover’s Companion describes “the world’s most popular spice” as a berry that grows in grapelike clusters on the pepper plant. This berry actually produces three different types of peppercorns – black, green and white; the difference between the three types is actually a product of when they’re picked and how they’re processed.
Remember, ground pepper (all varieties) is made from peppercorns. If you’re really keyed in to making phenomenal grilled meals, grinding whole peppercorns for fresh ground pepper will deliver better flavor to your finished plate.
Black Peppercorns
Black peppercorns are picked when the berry is not quite ripe. It’s dried until it shrivels, which is when the skin turns black. The flavor is actually the strongest of the three types, with the most heat. If you’re grinding for use in a rub, Steven Raichlen’s Barbeque Bible advises that you want a coarse grind for grilling, so you should set your mill to the largest grind setting. Black peppercorns are also called “cracked peppercorns” and are the type used in the popular French dish, Steak Au Poivre.
Green Peppercorns
This type of peppercorn is also picked from the pepper plant when the berry is still unripe. They’re usually a little softer and are often preserved in brine (although in some cases, they’re freeze dried). They possess some aromatic heat, but they’re less pungent. The flavor is often described as more “fresh”. Since the flavor is fresher, they’re more commonly used with vegetable and fruit dishes so they don’t overpower the food.
White Peppercorns
This last type of peppercorn made from the pepper plant berry is picked when the berry is ripe. The skin is removed and then it’s dried, lending to the difference in color. White is the least pungent of the three types and is often used with extremely light dishes, both for a light flavor and its distinctively light appearance on the plate – so you can avoid things like having little black flakes messing up the presentation of a beautiful piece of white fish with cream sauce.
Other Types
There are several other types of peppercorns that are used in certain types of cooking, including pink peppercorns used commonly in French cooking from the Baies Rose Plant and Szechuan peppercorns (also Sichuan) from the prickly ash tree used in
Asian cooking. These specialty peppercorns are usually more expensive and are often only available through specialty stores.
In addition to different types, many popular spice companies will sell a peppercorn blend (also called rainbow peppercorns) that mixes various types to impart a variety of flavors. These can usually be found at your regular grocery store and make a great addition to your spice rack because they’re an easy way to add a complex flavor profile to your food. They’re also good to have because they usually include pink peppercorns that are typically more expensive and harder to find.
Cutting Time with Contact Grilling
Tips & Tricks: Cutting Time with Contact Grilling
One of the great things about your George Foreman grill is that it cuts cooking time drastically by cooking food from both sides. Traditionally, grilling is a longer cooking process because it involves flipping food halfway through your cooking time to evenly mark and cook the food correctly. However, indoor contact grills (starting with the original Champ™ grill that launched the technology as a whole) cook from both sides at once with a top and bottom grill plate press system.
The heavy weight when you lift the cover of your grill is there for a reason to press food correctly
Have you ever wondered why the top cover of your George Foreman grill is a little heavy? This is actually a technical part of the design that contributes to making it cook well. The cover and top plate are designed to a specific weight in order to ensure the grill presses food correctly, so the cooking will be even from top to bottom. A lighter cover might not press as well, leading to inconsistent results.
When cooking on your contact grill, you want to make sure to account for the cut in cooking time so you don’t overcook or burn your food. As a general rule of thumb, anything besides poultry will cook in less than ten minutes. If you have your Use & Care manual, always check it first to see if the cooking chart lists the cook time for that particular food or cut. If it’s not included or you’ve lost your Use & Care manual, you can use the following ranges to serve as a reference:
Burgers (including Turkey Burgers): 4 – 6 minutes, depending on the thickness (add 1 – 2 minutes for frozen)
Hot Dogs: 4 – 5 minutes
Steak: 4 – 8 minutes, depending on the thickness of the cut
Pork: 4 – 6 minutes, depending on the cut
Sausage: 4 – 6 minutes, depending on thickness of link or patty
Bacon: 6 – 8 minutes
Chicken: 10 – 13 minutes, depending on thickness and parts being cooked
Turkey: 9 – 11 minutes, depending on thickness and parts being cooked
Fish: 4 – 7 minutes, except for Salmon Steaks (cook 7 – 9)
Shrimp: 3 – 4 minutes
The pressing action is easy to see with softer foods like Panini
Sandwiches & Wraps: 3 – 4 minutes
Fruit & Vegetables: Highly specific cook times to the type of produce being cooked; start at 3 – 4 minutes for most items and then increase as needed (some go up to 7); potato slices take much longer – sometimes up to 18 minutes for ½-inch slices
The nice thing about grilling is that you can check the food without affecting the results too much. In many types of cooking – slow cooking and pan searing, for example – you will actually affect your final results by checking and poking too often. Even in baking, you don’t want to keep the door open for too long, if at all (using your window to check progress is better). However, grilling allows you to check periodically without drastically impacting your final plate. This way, you can have fun experimenting with new foods you’ve never grilled before and still avoid overcooking and less than desired results.
Tips for Resolution Dieting
Tips to Meet Your Dieting Resolution
It’s the start of the first week of the year and it’s time to start putting those New Year’s resolutions into action! If you made a dieting resolution this year, chances are that it’s been tough to stick to it as you finish up the holiday leftovers and enjoy a few days of vacation. Today is a great time to start, though, as you get geared up to get back into work and your daily routine. To help you get a good jump into finally resolving your dieting resolution, here are our Top 3 Dieting Resolution Tips:
1. Make a Weekly Menu Plan
Since people often get into ruts and routines, start by mapping out what you usually eat in an average week. See where your problems days are – maybe you have a dozen different activities every Wednesday, so you always end up eating fast food. You can start making adjustments to what you’d normally eat in order to make a healthy diet plan moving forward. For those busy Wednesdays, for example, you do something easy; then, eat healthier when you have time to cook something different on another day.
Another great thing about having a plan is that you can shop for everything all at once and avoid the common trouble of finding yourself with nothing healthy to eat in the house. People often break their diets when they don’t have any convenient healthy options on hand, so making a menu and doing all your shopping can make dieting easier.
2. Take Small Changes, Turn Them into a Lifestyle
One of the worst things you can do when it comes to dieting is try to get it all done at once. If you change your entire diet at once and remove everything you love, you’ll be bored to tears and done with dieting in just a few days. A better option is to start making small changes gradually and then allow them to add up to your overall lifestyle change. Instead of removing all red meat if you eat a mainly red meat diet currently, simply exchange one of those red meat dinners for salmon or tuna.
The great thing about dieting this way is that if there’s a part of your diet that’s driving you nuts – like you get tired of eating salmon every week to get your recommended Omega 3 – you can adjust that part of your diet without giving up on the whole thing (i.e. you don’t eat salmon for that week, but you substitute walnut-encrusted chicken instead).
3. Healthy Grilling, Anyone?
As cooking techniques go, grilling is one of the healthier cooking options you have – frying is obviously one of the most fattening cooking methods, but people don’t usually consider the unhealthy aspects of others. Baking, for instance, often asks you to add fattening additives, such as butter to sauté, cooking spray on a casserole dish or creams for sauces. While each of these by itself might not be bad, add them up and you have a less healthy meal as a whole.
On the flipside, indoor grilling doesn’t really require you to add anything at all. An electric grill with a good nonstick coating doesn’t require you to add oil, butter or cooking spraying to prevent food from sticking to the plates as it cooks. As a result, you don’t have to add any extra calories with additives to make your food cook better.
In addition, flavorings and seasonings that you add to grilled food to enhance flavor – like rubs and marinades – don’t typically include a lot of fat-laden items like creams, butter and milk. Instead, they use things like spices, herbs and citrus juices to add flavor – none of which add a lot of fat and extra calories. In this light, it’s easy to see how a good grilled chicken dish would be healthier than an equivalent baked alternative.
For more information on daily recommended food servings and portion sizes, please visit fda.gov for a free PDF file of their Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
