Helpful Cooking Tip #4 - Planning For Perfection

One of the most important "secrets" to cooking great tasting food is careful planning. Different components of your end meal cook at different rates. You need to plan out your time and preparation so that when it's time to eat, all of your food is ready to go and just finishing. This might sound too complicated, but let me demonstrate with a classic BBQing dilemma: 

Lets say you are cooking chicken at a BBQ. You have legs/thighs and chicken breasts. If you throw them all on at the same time, either the legs are going to be undercooked/impossibly tough to eat or the chicken breasts are going to be completely overcooked. Why?

Dark meat has to get up to a much higher internal heat before it starts to breakdown and flake off. I think food safety standards say you should cook dark meat until an ***internal temp reading*** registers 185F - but you probably want to go slightly higher than that to get meat that just slips off the bone. It is very difficult to overcook dark meat (but easy to burn if you are using high heat). Even on a low setting, the heat coming off the burners in a BBQ is well above 185F. Just shut the lid and let the thighs cook (effectively cooking them in an environment similar in principle to an oven).  

Breast meat typically is made of a different type of muscle and has dramatically less internal fat that needs to break down. You can cook it on low or high heat, it doesn't really matter. You want to cook it long enough so that its internal temperature reads at least 145F. Depending on the relative thickness of the breast and heat of the BBQ, this could mean 1-2 mins on high on each side, or much longer on a lower setting. Once the internal chicken temp passes 160F, it's "well done" and not going to change anymore. At that point, the longer you cook it, you are just increasing the tissue breakdown of the muscle, causing fluid from the cells to breach the walls and spill out- resulting in dry chicken. I prefer chicken breast that is cooked to between 145-150F. It is still juicy but not pink. 

Putting these facts together, we can solve our chicken BBQ dilemma:

1. While heating up the BBQ, we stick the chicken thighs on- keep it on a medium/low setting initially, and use a food thermometer to figure out where the internal temp of your chicken thighs are. Remember- if the pieces are of different sizes, you are going to want to base your end decision on the thickest chunk. If smaller pieces get close to finishing early, just pull them out and stick them in a pan off the heat. Put them back on at the end when the heats gets kicked up for the breasts. 

2. Once the thighs are close to be ready for finishing (around 185F in the center), crank the BBQ up to high. That high heat is going to help sear the outside and get a nice crust to provide contrast between the exterior and the hopefully juicy interior. But if it is on high, you probably need to hold your attention temporarily at the BBQ. Just set aside 10 min or so (depending on amount of chicken) where you minimize distractions and you should be fine. Remember, internal temps on the chicken breasts need to be at least 145F, but they all tend to cook much more uniformly than the legs since they are solid chunks of muscle without bones. So once one breast is finished, all the other ones of the same size should be done (or close to it) as well.

Make sure to marinade ahead of time, finish with some glaze or sauce, and prepare to blast off to chicken bliss.