05/28/07 Grilling The Bird

Grilling the Bird. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It's Memorial Day. Family time and of course picnic time. Thousands, perhaps millions of barbeque grills are going to fired up and some kind of main course will be cooked. Steak? Hamburgers? Hot Dogs? Grilled Veggies? How about chicken? Richard Lobb is the communications director with the National Chicken Council says a good hot grill is fun! LOBB: Well chicken is just a great thing to put on the grill. It's very satisfying to go out there in the backyard and fire up your charcoal grill or start your gas grill. Lobb says cooking chicken really takes very little time or effort. LOBB: You can cook a chicken real quick, it doesn't take long to cook at all. And if it goes a little bit past the most desirable point, it's still fine. It's hard to overcook chicken, however you don't want to leave it on too long because then it can dry out; particularly the white meat. Great. Sounds like this guy knows his stuff, so any recommendations? LOBB: What I would suggest is you take some skinless, boneless breasts and then marinade or soak it in some vinegar for a while. That's my favorite trick and I'm a Southerner so I like to throw on some Tabasco Sauce while I'm at it  some kind of hot pepper sauce  and then let that marinade for half an hour or an hour or so; fire up the grill, clean off the grill so it doesn't stick and it will cook in 6 or 8 minutes at the most to a side. Yeah, trust me chicken likes to stick. Lobb recommends rubbing the grill with a paper towel soaked in oil or use a spray to help keep the chicken from sticking. He says it has a tendency to stick since it's so low in fat. So the chicken is done soaking in the marinade, now what? LOBB: So just whip it on there for a few minutes and just cut into it a little bit to make sure it's not pink in the middle any more or you can use a food thermometer if you have one, it should get to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Chicken should be cooked to be normal, there is no such thing as medium rare chicken, either it's done or it's not. And then you are done. Just whip that off and top it with your favorite salsa or something like that and you're all set. It's a wonderful quick way to get dinner ready for Memorial Day. Of course the National Chicken Council has loads of great grilling recipes. LOBB: Check our web site at www.eatchicken.com. Eatchicken.com and we have all kinds of great recipes in there we have a search data base you can just fill in "grill" and hit that and you'll get a whole bunch of really great grilling recipes. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.