How To Grill Chicken Breast On Gas Grill

How Long Do I Grill Chicken Breast

The grilling time depends on the temperature of your grill and the thickness of the chicken breasts. The temperature of a charcoal grill is difficult to regulate, and not all gas grills have a temperature gauge.

Your total grilling time for this recipe comes down to how long your chicken breasts take to get to the right internal temperature. When they reach an internal temperature of 155°F on an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the breast, take them off the grill. Cover in foil and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes. The breasts will continue to cook and reach the recommended 165°F internal temperature.

Trim The Chicken Breasts

Picking the right ingredient is always a key step to ensuring you end up with great results. Make sure you are buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts. These often come untrimmed in the package with minimal processing. You can also buy them trimmed .

If youre not a fan of trimming chicken, buying them hand trimmed from the butcher can be a great time saver, just be aware it will usually cost you a bit extra per pound. If you want to save yourself some money, trimming yourself is a great way to go! Remove any dangling pieces of fat, rib meat, connective tissues, or loose pieces of chicken meat to create nice, uniform breasts.

No matter if you buy trimmed or trim yourself, be sure that your chicken is fully defrosted before you attempt the next steps. Having chicken that is frozen in the middle can cause several issues during the marinating and grilling steps. My favorite way to defrost is to set the chicken in a zip top bag and then onto a plate and onto the bottom shelf of your refrigerator. Make sure your bag is open to allow the chicken to breathe while defrosting. Most chicken breasts will defrost within 24 hours in the fridge.

Substitution Ideas For The Marinade

Lemon juice Limes are fantastic with chicken, and you can swap out an equal amount for the lemon juice.

Thyme You can substitute dried oregano, rosemary, basil, or parsley here, or even do a mix. I like to use dried herbs for convenience, but you can also use fresh. Just double the amount used.

Dijon mustard If youre not a fan of mustard, feel free to swap in soy sauce, coconut aminos, balsamic vinegar, or a half amount of Worcestershire sauce.

Olive Oil You can also use avocado oil here if you prefer, though I like the flavor of olive oil more.

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Tips For Grilling To Grill Bone In Chicken Breast On Gas Grill

There are many ways to cook chicken. Grilling is a simple and tasty option that can be done on a George Foreman grill or any other outdoor grill. However, there are some things to keep in mind when cooking on a grill.

1) Ensure the grill is heated up If you want to make sure your food tastes great, make sure the grill is hot enough before you start cooking.

2) Preheat the George Foreman Grill When using a George Foreman Grill, make sure its preheated correctly according to the instructions on the product packaging this will help for an even cook on your chicken.

3) Baste with oil or butter The secret to juicy grilled chicken is basting it with oil or butter while it cooks on the grill. You can use olive oil, vegetable oil, melted butter or margarine if you dont want to cook with animal products.

4) Salt and pepper after cooking Salting and peppering after your chicken has cooked will bring out its natural flavours and give it that perfect crust everyone loves!

5) Keep an eye on your food while cooking Dont leave your grill unattended! Make sure you enjoy grilling your delicious chicken.

How To Make The Best Grilled Chicken Marinade:

Its very easy to make this simple chicken marinade. Place the chicken breasts in a storage bag or mixing bowl. Add in all the other marinade ingredients.

Stir to thoroughly combine the ingredients and then let the chicken marinade for at least 4 hours or overnight works as well. I love putting this chicken with the marinade in the refrigerator in the morning and then its ready to grill when its dinner time!

Then use all of our grilling tips to grill the chicken breasts perfectly!

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What Are The 4 Basic Types Of Seasoning Ingredients

There are four basic types of seasoning ingredients: Salt . Pepper Sugar and light-flavored sweeteners Acids When you season a food, you add just enough of one or more of these ingredients to change the foods basic taste, but not enough to add a whole new taste. Salt Salt is an important seasoning. More reading: bbq rub for chicken.

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Grill Over Indirect Heat

I know our tendency when grilling is to cook hot and fast from start to finish, but we can tear a page out of the low and slow playbook to really improve the overall texture and tenderness of our grilled chicken breast. The key is to bring the chicken up to temperature over indirect heat. This means you have direct heat going on half of your grill and no heat on the other half.

Your chicken breasts are going to be grilled on the indirect heat side of your grill where the heat is circulating and cooking the chicken without charring the outside edges of the chicken or burning those thin ends to a crisp before the middle is done. Your overall grill temperature should be hovering around 350 degrees F. This means you will have juicy, flavorful chicken from edge to edge!

Use a great internal thermometer in the thickest part of your chicken breast to check the temperature of your chicken as it cooks. I recommend an instant read thermometer from ThermoWorks. Your target temperature for this indirect cooking step is 150-155 degrees F before moving on to the next step. If you can keep your grill temperature at 350 degrees F, depending on the size of your chicken, this should take about 20-25 minutes.

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How To Grill Perfect Chicken Breasts On The Barbecue

When barbecuing chicken breasts, we tend to use a high temperature and direct heat, which makes them dry and tough. To get the most out of this cut of meat on the grill, we suggest a fail-safe four-step cooking method thats easy to apply to all your chicken breast recipesand no more sticking to the grill! Get ready for a summer of chicken perfection.

What Is The Best Temperature To Cook Chicken On A Gas Grill

For the majority of chicken, a grill surface temperature of 450° is ideal. On most gas barbecues, this is considered medium-high heat. If you are using a charcoal grill, you will need to close the damper a little bit to avoid excessive heat. Cooking the chicken at a high temperature will cause the skin to dry up before the inside is safe to consume.

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Seasoning For Grilled Chicken Breasts

I have a suggested seasoning that you can adjust to your needs but use what you want. Most commercial seasonings are heavy in salt, and if used with a brined chicken breasts will be too salty for most tastes.

BBQ sauce will work fine the last few minutes on this, but I prefer to build up a base of the sauce and suggest you see How to BBQ Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast on a Gas Grill.

I do love a good marinade for chicken. I have two on the site and recommend either one. Garlic Lemon Marinade for Chicken and Easy Chicken Marinade .

Dont Overcook This Is Super Important

Chicken doesnt take long to cook. If you over cook it, the chicken will be come dry and wont taste great.

If you pull it off right as the chicken is done, you will have moist and delicious chicken. On average chicken should take about 15 minutes to cook on a gas grill.

12 minutes if you chicken is thin and 20 minutes if you chicken is thicker.

You can also use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature. The chicken needs to have an internal temperature of 165 degrees F.

I cant stress enough that you do not want to overcook the chicken!

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Should You Pound Chicken Before Grilling

Before cooking the chicken breasts, make sure they are all the same thickness. Without pounding them, some breasts will cook more quickly than others, resulting in the thinner breasts becoming dried up and the thicker breasts becoming undercooked. Pounding also helps to tenderize the meat, which results in a more tender finished product when cooked.

Grilling Chicken Breasts To Perfection: Tips & Techniques

There are a few useful methods and tricks that you can use with any sort of cooking or grilling to get the most taste and texture out of your food:

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Tips For Buying The Best Meat

Buy quality chicken without added solutions Look for air chilled chicken with no retained water. Yes, the low-quality chicken thats injected with a solution of salt water and additives is cheaper, but it never tastes as good.

Buy smaller chicken breasts If possible, stay away from gigantic pieces of chicken breast, as they tend to be tougher and more difficult to cook evenly. I recommend buying the smallest breast pieces you see. As a rule of thumb, the three pieces of meat I have here weighed 1.25lbs total.

If you cant get smaller breast pieces that are less than 1 thick, you will need to either pound them out flatter with a rolling pin, or slice through the middle to turn them into cutlets, which are just thin-cut chicken breasts. Its easier to start with smaller pieces of meat from the beginning. The ones I bought here didnt need any pounding or prep at all.

How To Store Leftover Chicken

Let the grilled chicken sit a room temperature about 10 minutes to cool off, then refrigerate or freeze based on the times below.

• Refrigerate in a sealed container up to 34 days.
• Freeze whole, shredded, or chopped pieces tightly sealed up to 34 months. I like to freeze in separate smaller bags for easy leftover portions.

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Why You Should Let Your Pellet Grill Chicken Breast Rest

You should always let your pellet grill chicken breasts rest after cooking. Heres why.

When the chicken is heated, the juices near the chickens exterior evaporate into the surrounding air. Most of the juices that stay in the chicken are drawn towards the center. The juiciness is concentrated.

If you cut into your chicken right away, all that lovely juice spills out.

But, if you let it rest, magic happens. Well, really, its science. The juices in the interior want balance, so they make their way out of the center and spread out across the chicken evenly.

Thats how you get tender, juicy chicken.

So, put your cooked chicken on a clean plate. Cover it with some tin foil. And let it rest for at least 5-10 minutes.

How To Make Perfectly Grilled Chicken

The Spruce / Victoria Heydt

Grilled chicken is one of the most popular dishes, no matter the circumstance or way of serving it, whether you serve a main dish or on a sandwich. Or at a cookout. Or at family dinners. You get the idea. People love grilled chicken. And no wonder: When done right, grilled chicken is super flavorful and goes with a huge array of side dishes. Sadly, grilled chicken is also one of the most frequently destroyed dishes out there, either thanks to overcooking or undercooking . Or sometimes, it’s just plain cooked at the wrong temperature, which allows the chicken to slowly but surely dry out.

Worry notthere is a much better way. If you start with a high-quality chicken , and follow this simple method, and learn how to grill bone-in chicken on a gas grill, you’ll be amazed. By pre-salting the bird and using indirect heat for the bulk of the cooking time, you will be rewarded with juicy, flavorful, tender chicken that tastes as chicken should.

Serve it with potato salad, baked beans for a backyard picnic during those summer days, or grab your favorite sides any time of the year.

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Sunny’s Hot Honey Brined & Grilled Chicken

Cheat the marinade: Seasoned pickle juice makes a great brine or quick marinade when mixed with oil. Leftover vinaigrette or even bottled vinaigrettes are very good, too. Just be sure to read the labels sugar can burn quickly, so pay attention when grilling.

Glaze: Love a sticky, slightly sweet, caramelized glaze on your chicken? Brush barbecue sauce on about 2 to 3 minutes before the chicken is done. That way the meat doesn’t overcook and the glaze doesn’t burn. Don’t have any sauce? No problem. Just mix some apricot jam, a squirt of ketchup, a shot of bourbon and dash of chipotle powder for an almostinstant substitute.

Get Familiar With Direct And Indirect Grilling

Direct heat will get you great grill marks over a fast flame, while indirect will bring your meat to temperature. Direct heat means to cook the food directly over the heat source , while indirect cooking refers to cooking adjacent to the heat source. A combination of direct heat for prominent grill marks followed by indirect heat to cook the chicken to the correct temperature without drying it out makes for pretty, juicy chicken breasts.

A digital probe thermometer is one of the best tools you can own for the grill. While youve already done a lot of work to ensure that those chicken breasts are cooked correctly flattening them for even cooking, brining for juiciness, and cooking over direct heat for grill marks you still want to be doubly sure the chicken is cooked through.

Insert the probe thermometer into the thickest part of the chicken and look for a temperature of 165°F. While you can safely remove the chicken at 160°F and allow for some carryover cooking, 165°F is the safest temperature to ensure the chicken is cooked completely.

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How to Get Really Great Grill Marks

Make the marinade.

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How To Cook The Chicken On Your Gas Grill:

• Do NOT close the lid on your grill
• Cook chicken breasts on medium-high heat for 5-7 minutes per side
• Turn chicken frequently to cook evenly on both sides and pay attention to hot spots on the grillyou may see some pieces of chicken start to blacken. While it may look appealing, it will become dried out and crunchygross!
• Keep one of your burners on a lower temperature so you can transfer chicken thats cooking too quickly and slow the burning so it doesnt dry out the meat
• Do NOT overcook! I recommend removing the chicken when the internal temperature hits 157-160 degrees Fahrenheit and covering with foil so the carryover cooking brings it up to the USDA minimum of 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

We have posted some great recipes over the years, so follow the tips above and find a recipe below you like and enjoy some delicious chicken!

How Long Does It Take To Cook A Chicken Breast On A Gas Grill

I usually like grilled chicken to be cooked for 10 12 minutes per side, depending on how well done the meat is. If you want to make sure that the skin is crispy and the inside is juicy, you should flip the bird at around the midway point of cooking. You can also cook the outside of your chicken at this point, too. This will make the exterior of both sides of chicken crisp and juicy. To do this, simply flip over the whole chicken after cooking for 8-9 minutes on one side. Then, flip it over again after 2-3 minutes of resting. At this time, all the juices will be absorbed into the flesh of their respective sides.

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