Made some delicious grilled BBQ chicken today. Here’s how I did it.

Ingredients:

• Large chicken breasts. The larger/plumper you get, the longer it takes to grill them, BUT also has a much better chance of being juicy inside and not getting dried out.
• Grill Mates® Applewood Rub. Looks like this.
• Sweet Baby Ray’s® BBQ Sauce. Looks like this.

Steps:

1. Rub the chicken with the Rub.

Well, technically, the first step, if needed, is to dry the chicken pieces with some paper towels.. You don’t want the rub to slime off. The super important part here is that you are not stingy. I dump a big pile on top of the chicken piece, dump a little in the tupperware thingy, then rub it it in and around. Make sure to get it in all the nooks and crannies and make sure the whole piece is encrusted and orangy. Your hands will be orangy too. I don’t recommend licking it…

2. Refrigerate

You can put the rub on at any time, even right before you want to grill, but it’s ideal to put it on a few hours before you grill to give it time for the rub to set and the flavor to marinate. Take it out around 15 minutes before you start grilling.

3. Grill

Grilling is a nuanced thing, but here are a few of my recommendations for optimum results. Keep in mind, the times are all based on the heat of your grill, its hotspots, etc.. times are approximations.

• Start the grill 5-10 minutes before putting the chicken on so it’s hot
• To help with the chicken sticking to the grill, spray some of that grill spray stuff
• For the large chicken breasts I had, it took about 40 minutes on the grill, so you need to be committed
• If you have an infrared grill or something, avoid cranking the heat all the way to high. That’s a good way to dry those suckers out. My grill is a standard propane grill and doesn’t get quite as hot. For my grill, I left it on high for about 20 of the 40 minutes, then went to medium.

4. Flip

Generally speaking, it’s best to move or flip the meat as few times as possible. After about 10-15 min, flip all the pieces. They should have some nice grill marks by this point.

5. BBQ sauce

After about 5-10 minutes, squeeze some of that Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce on them, and use a marinade brush to spread the BBQ sauce around on the side that is facing you, giving it a nice glazed look. Careful not to go crazy, as you don’t want to remove the rub that’s on the chicken and you’ll be flipping these one more time before you’re done, and you don’t want them to drip all over your grill when you do.

6. Flip again, and more BBQ sauce

Another 5-10 minutes later, when the BBQ on the top has caramelized just a bit from the heat, flip them one more time, applying the BBQ sauce on that side.

7. You’re done!

Well, not quite yet. At this point, you keep them on the grill until they are no longer pink on the inside. Cooking chicken is always tricky, as you need it to be fully cooked (unlike beef). It’s not ideal, but I always remove the biggest ones and cut into the thickest part to see how it’s looking. Even this cut is calculated as you don’t want the juices to all flow out of the cut when you put it back on (if you need to). Once they’re white all the way through, you’re done. Your chicken should look something like this: