Chicken on the Grill : 100 Surefire Ways to Grill Perfect Chicken Every Time

Rating:
Summary: Great Intro to Chicken Grilling. Highly Recommended
Review: In considering this book, you should certainly be aware that grilling and barbecue are two different methods of cooking, at least as different as braising and roasting, even though the methods share similar equipment and are typically done outdoors. That means there is very little overlap between the recipes in this book and the Jamison's important barbecue book 'Smoke & Spice'. Unlike barbecue, which requires smoke and which is almost always done outside, grilling wishes to avoid smoke, is done on high heat, and can be done fairly competently indoors on a grill pan, as it has a lot more in common with saute than it does with barbecue.

The Jamison's first chapter is one of the best introductions to a cooking method I have seen anywhere. And, you probably need it, as the mind set surrounding grilling, especially outdoors, is not friendly to serious cooking. The lessons may be summarized in the observation that grilling IS cooking on high heat, which is done to impart a unique taste, and this activity requires your full attention.

Chicken is a very popular subject for treatment in a dedicated book; even a book dedicated to a single cooking technique. This is because chicken is cheap, it has some challenging variety (white versus dark versus skin on versus skin off versus young bird versus old bird), it is somewhat bland so it is an excellent medium for enhancing with flavors, and it has been cooked around the world, so every one of the world's great cuisines has a wealth of chicken recipes and flavorings which can be translated to the grill. Even the homegrown American cuisine has contributed major chicken dishes such as fried chicken, barbecued chicken, and Buffalo chicken wings.

The first chapter of recipes owes much to the worlds oldest cuisines and cooking methods. These are 'Skewers, Satays, and Other Small Favors'. These are nine recipes of grilling on skewers, especially with a peanut flavoring which defines the Indonesian Satay style of dish. The chapter ends with a 'deconstructed' salad of grilled and cubed chicken, needing no skewers.

The next chapter is five recipes for wings with pineapple, mustard, harissa, Tex-Mex, and traditional sauces. The next chapter is seven recipes for grilled chicken in sandwiches, including ground chicken grilled as a hamburger, several Mexican treatments of grilled chicken, and a classic chicken club sandwich.

The chapter on '50 Nifty Recipes for Boneless, Skinless Breasts' is really ten (10) recipes with about five variations in sauce, marinade, or garnish. The star of this chapter is probably the 'barbecued chicken pizza'. In this and some other recipes, the term barbecue is used very loosely, as the word is only earned by virtue of dressing the grilled chicken with a barbecue style sauce. That aside, the results are still impressive and delicious. This is getting into the Wolfgang Puck / Bobby Flay cooking with flash territory.

The chapter 'Bone-In Breasts, Thighs, and Legs' offers nine recipes with French, Portuguese, Maryland, East Indian, Cajun, and Georgian (US) flavors. This makes me surprised there is no bickering over chicken supremacy between Maryland and Georgia the way there is between North Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas City, and Texas over barbecue.

Just about the only thing left is to grill a whole chicken. Early in the book, the authors point out that grilling and a whole four pound chicken really do not go together very well. That is why every whole chicken method uses either some special equipment, some as humble as a beer can, special butchering, as when the bird is grilled under a brick per the classic Italian technique, or the bird is very small, as with a Poisson or a Cornish game hen. This chapter also contains the only true barbecue recipes in the book, as the barbecue technique is much friendlier to whole chicken cooking than is grilling. This chapter also introduces the rotisserie, which is available on many gas grills. Three rotisserie recipes are provided, two with chickens and one for Cornish game hens.

The last chicken recipe chapter gives seven (7) things to do with grilled chicken in salads and pastas. All are pretty traditional. All look delicious.

The last chapter gives fifteen (15) side dishes and desserts. Again, these are almost all variations on standards, but most of the recipes give you something to do with your grill and vegetables while those Satay skewers are grilling.

If you are a griller, or, if you really like chicken and can swing a grill pan, this book is a great addition to your kitchen. Even if you don't have Marimoto's knife skills or Bobby Flay's flair with squeeze bottled sauces, this book will give you all you need as long as you can light charcoal and maintain a well-controlled heat level under your grill.

Highly recommended. Easy recipes for grillers.