Easy Grillery-tested recipes by Grillworks and Grillery owners.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Billy Brackenridge's marinaded chicken

After unpacking the grill Friday, I cooked chicken. My marinade is olive oil, dry vermouth, Worcestershire, dry (Coleman’s) mustard, finely chopped white onion, rosemary and black pepper. The marinade tastes dreadful raw. It depends on both the chicken skin and white onion to sweeten when caramelized under fire.

As a Southern Californian I have always cooked over mesquite charcoal, and waited for it to reduce to ash and coals. I took your advice and started with apple wood flame putting the chicken on as soon as the fire started. I mixed in a bit of mesquite charcoal. These are large irregular chunks.

A modest fire gave me 2 ∏ hours of cooking time which is the way I like to cook chicken. I started cooking with the grill at its highest level and gradually reduced the height. This way I was able to keep a constant temperature. The apple wood burned off and mesquite took over.

The groove system worked well, and I basted regularly. As I was able to cook the chicken for a long period over low heat the result was cooked thoroughly and both breast and thighs were moist as the cooking temperature did not boil off the water. The object is to get to an internal temperature of 160 and never get above 212.

The negative of all this is the neighborhood didn’t get to smell my cooking. I have cooked chicken for years, and this method of cooking normally makes a wonderful smell that carries for several hundred yards. With the Grillery, the aromatics went right into the basting pan. The onions sweetened up and rosemary got more and more concentrated, and everything ended up in the chicken.
The resulting chicken was wonderful.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting to know.


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