Grilled Chicken With BBQ Sauce

As an anal BBQ purest type guy, I cannot bring myself to call this dish BBQ chicken, because I’m cooking it on the grill over direct heat – hence the title. Several posts lately described various chicken brines which inspired me to use one that I’d gotten from a competitive BBQ’er and agreed to keep secret, but it contains the normal things – water, salt, brown sugar, garlic, etc. I added all the ingredients to half the water amount and brought to a simmer to be sure the salt and sugar dissolved. I then added the equivalent of half the water in ice to a one gallon plastic freezer bag and slowly poured the brine over the ice. After a few massages, the ice was melted and the brine was cold and ready for the chicken – 6 of the fryer-sized breasts I’d recently frozen.

I brined them for about 5 ½ hours, removed, rinsed lightly, and coated with Wolfe Citrus Rub and back into the fridge for 1½ hours – it was going to be an hour but we had a heavy downpour (2 Inches in a short period – hope it didn’t all run off) just before I started cooking. I fired up the grill and cooked them to 165* inside, applying some Smack Yo Mama Big Kahuna Polynesian BBQ Sauce the last few minutes. I cook the bone-in breast at least twice on the top, bottom and ends, like this.


About ready for the sauce.


I painted sauce on each surface once then cooked it on that side.


Then after removal, I painted another coat on the top. We had a choice of no black, lightly black, or heavy black.


I was going to make up a pasta side dish, but we still had some pasta left (less the shrimp) from the shrimp scampi pasta we had on July 13 and couldn’t come with anything we thought we’d like better. So Bev added a few more tomatoes before she nuked it and once again, we both loved it - I believe I could eat it once a week. We also had one piece of ciabatta left which Bev split, buttered, sprinkled with garlic powder and toasted. Here's my plate and I obviously chose the blacker one.


The meat was moist and tender and the meal turned out delicious - I liked the flavor profile created by the brine, rub, and sauce. This was our first ever ciabatta and it will be a staple around here from now on - I like the flavor, the chewiness, and it's ability to hold together.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry