Sunday Special - Grilled Chicken

We had started a summer weekend tradition of roasting chicken for my daughter and her playmates a few years back. We had setup a fireplace on the terrace and had the kids play around in the evening, while we roasted the chicken. We would setup a moonlight dinner for them. They all just loved those evenings and would look forward to the next time we plan it.

The first time, I went all out with an Italian herb recipe to marinate the chicken. They liked it but felt the chicken was not spicy enough. So the next time, I went with the traditional Indian spices and they loved it. So I stuck to that marinade mix ever since.

But with the arrival of my little one, and the time it took to roast the chicken on fire, I started grilling it in the oven and then taking it to terrace to smoke it in the fire. The kids still loved it and we felt the chicken was still juicy in this method of cooking.

But this tradition got sparser and sparser after we read about the health hazards of consuming smoked or grilled foods frequently.

So we had stopped grilling chicken, until recently, when my little one took a liking to grilled/barbecued chicken and not the regular chicken curry I cook at home. So I had to get back to grilling the chicken in the oven.

Oh Boy! do they love it. If they are not home when I am grilling, they get back home and start sniffing around immediately asking if I have grilled chicken. And the little one wants to eat it real hot, straight off the oven.

Okay without much ado, let us get to the bottom of it! How to get the perfect juicy grilled chicken.

All recipes for the marinade mix talk about hung curd. That is curd hung in a muslin cloth for a few hours, such that the whey is drained out and we have very thick cheese like paste.

I tried mixing the regular spices with hung curd, but I felt the marinade did not do the job. The spices did not penetrate the chicken even if we make the right cuts.

So I stopped filtering out the whey and started using the curd as such in the marinade. For this recipe, we buy the chicken with the skin. The skin protects the inside from drying out and helps it cook well. The grilling process will char the skin, but you can just remove the skin, once it is out of the oven, and you are left with juicy grilled chicken.

Recipe (serves 6-8)

Ingredients

Marinade mix:
Curd - 1 cup
Chilli powder - 2 tsp
Salt - 1 tbsp (or to taste)
Cumin powder (jeera) - 1 tsp
Pepper powder - 1 tsp
Coriander powderr (dhaniya) - 1 tsp
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp

Chicken - 1 full uncut with the skin

Olive oil - 2 tbsp

Juice from lemon - for garnishing

Method

Clean the chicken and make cuts along the legs and breast of the chicken. Leave the skin intact.

Mix the ingredients for the marinade.

Smear the marinade all over and make sure to stuff the cuts with enough marinade.

Let the chicken marinade at room temperature for an hour or two.

Grease the grill pan with olive oil. Place the chicken on the pan. Drizzle some more olive oil on top.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

Place the grill pan on a stand such that it is as close to the grills on the oven as possible.

Grill for 60 minutes.

Make sure to flip the chicken over to the other side and brush the chicken with the juices collected in the grill pan

Remove the charred skin out. brush again with the oil and juices. 

Serve with mint chutney and a slice of lemon. 

Verdict: The skin helps to retain the moisture during the grilling process. Using regular curd instead of hung curd helps as well. I would love to hear any tips and known tricks that work for you. Do let me know in the comments.