Grilled Lemon Chicken - Cooks Illustrated

Published May 1, 1998.

The best way to get lemon flavor into chicken is not by marinating and not by basting but giving it a quick, final dunk into a lemon-garlic-olive oil sauce.

The Problem

Most lemon chicken tastes sparsely of lemon (if at all) and the meat is often tough and dry.

The Goal

We wanted moist, perfectly grilled chicken with lemon flavor that went straight to the bone.

The Solution

Using a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic for our sauce, we tried our three methods, the first two being fairly familiar: (1) marinating a chicken for two hours before grilling and (2) brushing a chicken with the sauce throughout grilling. Our third method, derived from one that the father of one of our editors had developed over the course of 40 years of making grilled lemon chicken, involved grilling the chicken till it was nearly done, pulling it off the grill to dip it in lemon sauce, returning it to the grill over low heat for about five more minutes, and then dipping it in the sauce once more before serving. The third method provided us--as it had our editor's father--with the lemoniest tasting chicken ever.

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