Easy BBQ Chicken Recipes – How to Tell When the Meat is Done?

bbq chicken recipe

Table of Contents

When it comes to grilling, barbecued chicken is one of the classic selections, along with hamburgers and hotdogs. If you are looking for an easy BBQ chicken recipe, you have come to the right place. Everyone loves a slowly yet perfectly cooked barbecue chicken on the grill. Slather it with some barbecue sauce, and it will surely be the star of your summer gathering.


Recipe #1: Simple Barbecue Chicken with Hot Marinade

bbq marinade chicken breast

The recipe below will give you an amazingly chargrilled barbecue chicken that is not only juicy but perfectly cooked as well. You can serve four people if you follow the ingredient amounts, but you can always adjust accordingly. In just 20 minutes, along with the marinating time, you can have delectable chicken with these super easy steps:

Ingredients

First, gather the ingredients, which are the following

  • One orange
  • Half a tablespoon of smoked paprika
  • One chili, dried
  • Half a tablespoon of mustard
  • Three tablespoons of honey
  • One teaspoon of olive oil
  • Three tablespoons of ketchup
  • Four pieces of five-ounce chicken

Before you proceed, there are a few things that you should be noted with the ingredients. For the most essential ingredient, stick to boneless (and skinless, if possible) chicken breasts. Since this recipe delivers a fiery marinade, the best choice for the mustard is English or Dijon mustard. However, if you cannot find either, you can always choose the good old yellow mustard. To taste, you can add about a dash of sea salt and also a dash of freshly ground pepper.

Instructions

Once all the ingredients are ready, it is time to light the grill before the marinating. This way, the flames will die down once you have the sauce prepared.

Chicken Marinade

  1. Get a bowl, one that is not too deep. You will use it for the orange zest. Grate the orange to get the zest and put it in the shallow bowl.
  2. In the same bowl as above, crush the dried chili and add to the orange zest.
  3. Add the other ingredients namely the ketchup, olive oil, paprika, mustard, and honey.
  4. Season with just a pinch of salt and pepper before mixing everything.
  5. Set aside a few tablespoons of the marinade, which you will use later.
  6. In the same bowl as above, you can add all the chicken breasts. There should be enough marinade to coat the meat. Be sure to turn each one over so they are all well-coated.
  7. Use a plastic wrap to cover the bowl and leave it for five to 10 minutes.
marinade chicken breast

Grilling Chicken

  1. By now, the grill should be ready. If you have a grill pan instead of a grill, set it to high heat so that it is scorching hot.
  2. Get some tongs to take the chicken and transfer to the grill pan or your grill.
  3. As you cook each chicken breast, spoon a bit of the sauce you set aside earlier and add it on both sides as you turn the meat.
  4. You are done now. As you can see, it is really easy to grill the chicken with this recipe. You can serve the chicken as-is, or you can serve with fresh green salad and potato salad with chives. Another option is to add it as an ingredient to a sandwich made with good-quality bread. Sliced tomatoes and leafy lettuces will give the sandwich a good crunch.

Recipe #2: A Saucy Barbecue Chicken Recipe

barbecue chicken

If you want a BBQ chicken that is not too sweet and not too tangy, this recipe is for you. The chicken will be ready in 40 minutes with five minutes for prepping and 35 minutes for the actual cooking.

Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you need for two servings:

  • One and a half tablespoons of olive oil
  • Three tablespoons of brown sugar
  • ¼ cup of onion, diced
  • Two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
  • Two cloves of garlic, minced
  • One tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
  • Five tablespoons of ketchup (or chili sauce)
  • Three tablespoons of honey
  • Two boneless chicken breast halves with the skin removed
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Once you have all the ingredients listed above, you only need to follow the steps below to start making this favorite barbecue chicken:

  1. The very first step is to preheat the grill by setting it to medium-high heat.
  2. Using a skillet, heat the olive oil in medium heat.
  3. Sauté the garlic and onion until they are ready.
  4. Add the ketchup, brown sugar, honey, apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Stir them all together.
  5. Cook the ingredients until they form a thick sauce.
  6. Remove the sauce from heat and let it cook.
  7. Give the grill gate a little bit of oil.
  8. Dip the chicken meat in sauce and make sure both sides are coated.
  9. Cook all the chicken on the grill for about 10 to 15 minutes. Turn them once, so both sides are cooked evenly.
  10. Transfer the chicken to the skillet where you cooked the sauce.
  11. Take the skillet and cook over medium heat. Once again, make sure both sides are cooked, which should take five minutes each.

You can wrap the chicken in aluminum foil, which aids in keeping the food moist and cleanup is much more comfortable as well.


The Trick to Getting the Best BBQ Chicken

When you watch other people barbecue their chicken, you instantly think it is an easy job to accomplish. After all, you just need to place the chicken on the grill, cook both sides, and serve. However, not all grilled chicken will turn out to be a success. If your neighbor’s chicken is much juicier and you cannot seem to get better results even with the same recipe, you may be doing something wrong.

smoke roasted chicken breast

1. Barbecue Chicken with Low Heat

In reality, barbecue chicken should be smoke-roasted using low heat. However, most people simply grill the chicken and call it barbecued. Still, it does require the same attention to detail and technique. You should know when to move the pieces around, so they do not start burning. You may also want to flip them as frequently as the recipes suggest.

The difference between chicken, hot dogs, and burgers lies on the time they need to cook. Out of these three, chicken requires more time, so you need to be more patient. This particular meat loves it when you cook at lower temperatures. Therefore, if you prepare with just a bit of extra heat, it will be easy to mess it up. You can either over-char the barbecue or undercook, which happens when you get too scared about overcooking.

2. Be Patient When Grilling Chicken

Patience is indeed needed because it takes at least an hour up to two hours to grill the chicken correctly. While many people use barbecuing and grilling interchangeably, they are different when it comes to pace and heat level. Grilling requires high temperatures and should be done fast. On the other hand, barbecuing takes some time and uses low heat. You can, therefore, grill a chicken breast but you should barbecue thighs, legs, and wings.

3. Get the Right Chicken Grilling Temp

While being patient is important, the key to excellent and irresistible barbecue is getting the right chicken grilling temp. It is vital to moderate the heat no matter how you choose. You can either use a gas grill then turn to low heat, or set the coals on one side, which will give you a cool spot. If you choose the latter, you should place the meat on the top rack, so it is not near the fire.


How to Grill or Barbecue at the Correct Temperature?

1. Choose A Reliable Meat Thermometer.

It is difficult to guess whether you have the right chicken grilling temp, which is why you should use a trusty meat thermometer to guide you. There are quite a few handy tools out there, but ThermoPro Food Thermometers are your best bet if you are searching for affordable thermometers that you can always rely on.

wireless thermometer thermopro tp-07

ThermoPro has a few selections of food thermometers, but two of their best products are ThermoPro TP-07 and TP-08. First, the TP-07 is a wireless thermometer that weighs 8.3 ounces. You can use the product to check the meat temperature from a distance of up to 300 feet. It is useful, so you do not have to keep going back and forth to the kitchen or in front of the grill just to see if you have the right temp. Additionally, you can set the desired temperature, and the device will beep once the level you specified is reached.

The TP-08, on the other hand, is also a wireless thermometer, which weighs more than TP-07 with 12 ounces of weight. This dual-probe remote device has a 15 cm long meat probe and can take up to 572F or 300C. The display of the unit will give you both the food and the cooker temperature.

2. Correctly Use The Meat Thermometer

Using the two thermometers should be easy. All you need to do is get the meat probe and stick it into the thickest part of the chicken since it is considered the coolest part of the meat. Make sure it does not hit fat deposits or bones. For more of an in-depth look on how to use the device when barbecuing, here are the steps:

  1. Turn the grill on first.
  2. Make sure the transmitter and the receiver are paired. Refer to the user manual of the unit on how to do it.
  3. You can put the chicken breast on the grill rack once the TP-07 or TP-08 is switched on and paired.
  4. You can then insert the probe sensor to the thickest part of the meat as mentioned above.
  5. Ensure the probe sensor wire does not come in contact with the flames and the grill cover does not crush it.
  6. The transmitter should be away from the heat source and should be in a dry place.
  7. Continue checking the receiver to see the temperature.
  8. Once the food is cooked, you can remove the probe.

Be careful when handling the probe because it will certainly be hot. You can then serve the barbecue chicken to your guests.

The TP-07 has a smart LCD display, which is useful when used with the temperature alarm. Simply set the temperature and it will blink in blue while it is reading. Once the heat is nearing your desired temp, it will turn green and red with a beeping alarm once it is cooked.

As for the TP-08, you can predefine the temperature for the grill or the food, whichever you want to keep track of. You can easily choose the temperature range for the chicken, from low to high. This device also lets you start a countdown function or a timer, and it will beep when the meat is cooked.

Recommend Reading

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Shopping Cart
customer service

REVERED CUSTOMER SERVICE

We truly pride ourselves on a hassle-free, friendly customer support experience with a team that’s available 5 days a week from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm EST. Rest assured if you contact us by email, phone, or online chat, you’ll be speaking to a native speaker in your spoken language.

FEEDBACK BASED DESIGN

The customer service team is always listening, taking notes, and quantifying complaints to ensure our products are continually improved. Due to selling directly to you, the customer, via Amazon, we can use product reviews to help us improve our existing products or help further development of new products.

feedback based design
superior warranty

INDUSTRY LEADING WARRANTY

Our warranty coverage for our products is the backbone of our company and we’re capable of offering such a robust warranty is that we believe in our product quality due to our feedback based design philosophy and if anything does happen, we’ll stand behind our products. This also enables our customer support to team deliver continuously great experiences.