A Small Homestead

Welcome to my blog about our adventures on and away from our modest family homestead. We are a young family trying to raise as much of our own food as possible and still enjoy life while holding down full time jobs and work two small home based businesses. Life can get hectic and challenging but at the end of the day we have most importantly each other, good food on our table and a roof over our heads.

Monday, August 05, 2013

Throw another piece of chicken on the BBQ please!

As I mentioned in a previous post our home grown chicken is very lean.  Learning to cook it on the BBQ took some creative thinking.  I use the BBQ all year, all weather.  I needed to figure out how to cook our home grown chicken on the BBQ without it drying out.  The first time I cooked it I thought I could throw it on the grill like I would "store bought" chicken and it would turn out juicy and tender ...wrong...it got chewy and tough.  After speaking to our butcher she said to cook it longer.  I tried cooking it on low heat over a longer period of time than I would have cooked "store bought" chicken.  Cooking it longer actually dried it out.  I had to figure out a way to keep the chicken from drying out.  I tried placing a pan of water under the chicken.  Eureka!  Placing a pan of water under the chicken keeps it hydrated and keeps it from drying out.  No more dry, chewy, tough home grown BBQed chicken. I placed the pan of water on the heating grid below the grilling rack.  The pan of water creates steam to keep the chicken from drying out.  Voila! Tender, juicy delicious chicken........  YAY!


By the way, the photo above is of chicken thighs.  Our birds ranged about 10 lbs when butchered, we got some nice sized portions.

I thought I would share my little tip in hopes it may help someone else cook delicious home grown chicken on the BBQ!

'til next time!
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7 comments:

  1. Practical ParsimonyAugust 05, 2013 10:50 p.m.

    What kind of chicken weighs ten pounds? My RIRs don't weigh that much and are huge.

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    1. TereasaAugust 06, 2013 2:11 p.m.

      This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. TereasaAugust 06, 2013 5:45 p.m.

      Meat kings. These are NOT heritage birds. They are created to grow large in a short period of time. Most people give them 8 weeks to get to 8 lbs. We had to wait to get ours to a butcher ast he butcher we were booked with got delayed due to personal reasons,so they were 5 months old when butchered, they were the size of small turkeys. My husband has been looking into a Whiterock Cornish cross to get away from the feed store meat kings but a hawk killed our rooster..... Meat Kings are bred to grow quickly, they are eating/growing machines....

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  2. TereasaAugust 06, 2013 2:09 p.m.

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Sue FrelickAugust 06, 2013 2:29 p.m.

    Yummy, Tereasa! That looks really good. Thanks for the water pan tip. Do you parboil your chicken before you BBQ it?

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    1. TereasaAugust 06, 2013 5:48 p.m.

      No I don't parboil it, that is usually done to remove the fat which ours doesn't have to begin with. Though I never parboiled store bought chicken either, it removes a lot of the flavour in my opinion. When bbqing store bought chicken, which is pretty much never these days, I use a grill pan with the holes in it to help catch some of the drippings to avoid bbq flames. :)

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    2. Sue FrelickAugust 15, 2013 10:20 p.m.

      Oh. I always did it to make sure it was cooked all the way through. As you can see I'm not much of a bbq-er. :-)

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