Lately, I have fallen into a trap of reaching for the same cookbooks and making the same things over and over. So to break the mold, I decided pick a recipe out of something new, Taste of Home - The Ultimate Guide to Grilling I flipped through it a several times and always seemed to stop at tropical island chicken. I decided that was the one and my wife went off to HEB.
She came back with a whole HEB natural fryer chicken for 5 bucks! Up to this point, My only experience with whole chickens has been spatchcocking. This recipe required me to go a bit further and quarter the chicken. Luckily, there are a lot of excellent YouTube videos to show you the way. All the videos demonstrated breaking down a chicken using a chef’s knife, but I ended up throwing a pair of poultry shears into the mix. (It seemed to make it a LOT easier).
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients
1⁄4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce 1⁄3 cup canola oil 1⁄4 cup water 2 tbsp dried minced onion 2 tbsp sesame seeds 1 tbsp sugar 4 garlic cloves, minced 1 tsp ground ginger 3⁄4 tsp salt 1⁄8 tsp cayenne pepper
Directions
- Combine ingredients put in bag along with chicken quarters. Marinate for 8 hours to overnight.
- Indirectly grill chicken over indirect medium heat for 45-60 minutes.
I ended up cooking these indirect on my egg for 45 minutes @ 400. I pulled the breasts when they hit 160 and kept the thighs on until they hit 178-180. The wings came off when they looked ready. I then did a final sear on my Weber Genesis for a minute or so to get the skin nice and crisp.
We had these with some Raging River coated green beans and a loaf of french bread.
The chicken came out super juicy and it was easily some of the best chicken I have ever had. Next time, I think I might add a little more cayenne pepper to the marinade.