BBQ Chicken Breasts w/ Soy-Lemon Marinade

I know I said it would be 5 or 6 days before I would be able to get time on the Egg again. One of the advantages of being my own boss is I can make my own hours. So I promised myself I’d start work a couple hours early today if I knocked off early to cook something up outside. There must have been chicken vibes in the air because like several others, I did chicken too.

The chicken recipe was called Barbecue Chicken Breasts with Soy-Lemon Marinade and it was from Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ Book. It was supposed to be a quick cook. The boneless skinless chicken breasts received a 30-45 minute marinade. While they were in the fridge, I ran out and fired up the Egg and set it up for indirect grilling. Everything went well, with one exception. The recipe said the breasts would take 8 minutes a side at 400 degrees. This seemed crazy to me! When I do chicken breasts in the oven they take nearly an hour at 350 degrees. I just knew 50 degrees more wouldn’t make that much of a difference. So I armed myself with the fastest instant read thermometer I owned and headed out to the grill. The 16 minutes went by and I hadn’t even hit 100 degress. Now this was not a surprise, and not the end of the world....but it makes it hard to time your sides. It turned out the total cooking time was 48 minutes and the breasts ranged from 160 to 162. If anyone is using this cookbook be careful with the cooking times: This is the second major discrepancy between recipe and reality I’ve found. The first was their signature recipe Big Bob Gibson’s Bar-B-Que Chicken. The book said 3 hours for the spatchcocked whole chicken. I’ve never had a whole chicken take more than 1:45, so I knew this was crazy too. The two times I’ve made it it took 1:30. OK onto the pictures:



The chicken breasts received a 45 minute marinade using: Soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, onion powder, garlic powder, ginger, paprika & black pepper.





The finished marinade.





The chicken and marinade are in a zip-lock bag and are off to the fridge for 45 minutes.





This meal answered the chicken and egg question: The egg came first!. I had to set the Egg up for indirect grilling and preheat it first. I have the Platesetter on legs up, with a drip pan inside, and the s/s grill grate on top of the legs. The Chicken is on the Egg which is running at 400 degrees and there is a hickory chunk giving some smoke.





The chicken is being served with some chicken flavored rice.





Despite the far longer than planned cook, the chicken was still moist, I’m sure the marianade helped but I’d bet the good seal of the Egg contributed to the moistness as well.





My wife absolutely l-o-v-e-d this chicken, so it was a worthwhile cook. Me not so much. I wasn’t real crazy about the flavor from the marinade. The chicken was moist and tender despite the 45 minute vs the 16 minute grill time.





The chicken even had a faint pink smoke ring.



A quick digression:
A couple who I regularly cook for gave me two Egg-warming presents on Monday: The first was a BGE hat and the second (shown below) is the BGE Dutch oven. Now I don’t have to worry about whether my LeCruset Dutch oven will fit under the dome of the Egg. I have some leftover brisket and now leftover smoked chicken, plus a Dutch oven. I see Brunswick stew coming real soon.



Jim

Was it something specific about the flavor or just an overall feeling that you didn't care for? I know a lot of Asian recipes call for soy and lime; do you think using lime instead of lemon would've made a difference?

Brad I normally like Asian influenced recipes. In fact strike that, make it love. I know I've had soy/line before, and I'm pretty sure I've had lemon/soy. I really can't quite place my finger on it but there was this almost bitter/salty taste that put me off. In fact when I develop the pictures, I checked to make sure I had accidentally used garlic salt or onion salt in lieu of the powder. But as the picture show I use the correct ingredients. My wife couldn't stop eating it and absolutely loved it. I think I'll just have to try it again to see if it's a one-time thing for me-I originally thought it was right up my alley. I'll also take a little sip of the marinade to see if I detect that flavoring it.

Jim

Looks good!

I love my dutch-oven I use it all the time camping with Boy-scouts

What size did you get? (they come all different sizes 8-22" and shapes)

I love my "indoor" Le Cruset Dutch oven. That one is a rather large elliptical shaped Dutch oven. The new Dutch oven is 12 inches in diameter. It was the stock BGE Dutch oven.

I'm curious do you ever use the lipped lid to put coals on top of the Dutch oven? And what type of recipe is it where you actually do that? TIA

Jim

Looks real good, Jim! Even if I can only see half a picture....

Dyal_SC wrote:

Looks real good, Jim! Even if I can only see half a picture....

Hmmm it looked twice as good before this "improvement". Hopefully this can be easily fixed. I logged in on my iPhone earlier and the topics page was unreadable. The text and line spacing were so so big everything overlapped.

Jim

jfm0830 wrote:

I'm curious do you ever use the lipped lid to put coals on top of the Dutch oven? And what type of recipe is it where you actually do that? TIA

Jim

We use it with coals on the top all the time, gives more even cooking.

Normally we do at least 1 breakfast (Mountain Man) in the Dutch oven every camping trip along with doing a meal or some desert in it also.

Charcoal

Avoid bargain brands of charcoal and self-lighting charcoal. They generally don’t last as long.

A general rule for charcoal is to take the number of inches in diameter of the Dutch oven and place two more coals than that number on top and two fewer coals on the bottom. For example, for the 12-inch ovens that the troop uses, place 14 briquettes on top and 10 on the bottom for a typical meal. That puts the temperature close to a moderate level of 350.

Don’t automatically fill the entire chimney with charcoal when lighting the coals. If you need 24 coals for your fire and the recipe will cook in less than an hour, you only need about 24 coals. If your recipe will take a long time to cook, you might need to add coals after 45 to 60 minutes. In that case you might want to light more coals at the beginning and leave them in the chimney as replacements to be added later. If you add coals, add them in the same proportion top and bottom. If you know that you will need to start a second chimney of briquettes, a good trick is to leave some hot coals in the chimney to start the next batch.

Charcoal placement:

ROASTING - The heat should come from the top and bottom equally. Use a 1-to-1 ratio of coals above and below the oven.

BAKING - Done with more heat from the top than the bottom. Use a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 ratio with more on the lid.

FRYING, BOILING, ETC. - All heat should come from the bottom. Use coals on the bottom only.

STEWING, SIMMERING - Almost all heat should be on the bottom. Use a 1-to-4 ratio with more underneath.

Arrange the bottom briquettes in a circular pattern so that they are at least ½ inch inside the oven’s edge. Arrange the briquettes on the lid in a checkerboard pattern, or around the edge of the lid and several across the top.

Top or bottom, do not bunch the briquettes; that can cause “hot spots” that can burn the food. To prevent small hot-spot problems, rotate the oven ¼ turn every 10 to 15 minutes. If there are coals on the lid, also rotate the lid in the opposite direction.

Baking requires more precise temperature control than most other types of cooking. The chart below tells you how many coals to use for a 12-inch oven and where to place them in order to obtain certain temperatures. Note that this is only for baking; other types of cooking may require different ratios of top to bottom coals.

Temperature (F): 325 350 375 400 425 450
Top coals: 16 17 18 19 21 22
Bottom coals: 7 8 9 10 10 11

Baking recipes in regular cookbooks sometimes refer to Slow, Moderate, Hot, or Very Hot ovens. That usually means:

Slow 250 to 350
Moderate 350 to 400
Hot 400 to 450
Very Hot 450 to 500

Trolby:
Thank you so much for all of the detailed information regarding the "outdoor" style Dutch Oven. I've copied it into a text document so I can keep it handy. I used my new Dutch oven for the first time Saturday night and loved everything about it.

Once again thanks for taking the time to gather that info.

Jim

Jim,

Great looking Marinade, I love the color, and you can tell a good marinade since it still looked present after the cook.

That last shot of the chicken looked real juicy! or are my eye deceiving me?

Dutch oven is my favorite thing to cook with indoors, but for some reason it's mostly recipes in the winter I use it for, need to break it out in the summer as well.

jfm0830 wrote:

Trolby:
Thank you so much for all of the detailed information regarding the "outdoor" style Dutch Oven. I've copied it into a text document so I can keep it handy. I used my new Dutch oven for the first time Saturday night and loved everything about it.

Once again thanks for taking the time to gather that info.

Jim

I can not take credit for that, I did not have my notes at work but My recipes all started from a post by a fellow Scout Master that posted a nice word "DOC" file

If you do a Google search you can find it or one very close

Thanks sroach, as to your question:

sroach wrote:

...That last shot of the chicken looked real juicy! or are my eye deceiving me?....

Dutch oven is my favorite thing to cook with indoors, but for some reason it's mostly recipes in the winter I use it for, need to break it out in the summer as well.

No your eyes aren't deceiving you. The chicken was extremely moist. I took a couple similar shots to try to show how juicy it was. Sadly none of them were in good focus. I was rather surprised how moist it stayed since the cooking time was 3x what was expected.

I agree with you about my Dutch ovens getting more use in the winter, than the summer. My cooking this meal now was a combination of having the right left overs and getting a new Dutch oven. But I too plan to try to use it more in the summer.

__________________________________________________________________________

Trollby wrote:

...I can not take credit for that, I did not have my notes at work but My recipes all started from a post by a fellow Scout Master that posted a nice word "DOC" file

If you do a Google search you can find it or one very close

Well you still took the time to locate the info and post it for me, and I do appreciate that. Thanks again.

Jim

Well Jim, you sure did get some pretty coloring on that chicken, and I also see how moist and tender the interior looks. Just sorry you did not enjoy it as hoped. However, your wife's luvin' it sure reveals something!

beercuer wrote:

Well Jim, you sure did get some pretty coloring on that chicken

+1

It all looks very tasty. I also like the side of cranberry sauce--love that stuff.