Here is a favorite quick and easy marinated Chicken Tender grilling recipe that serves up a tangy tender bite that you can grill in about ten minutes. Granted prep time is a bit longer but that’s what beer is for, right? You might be asking yourself – “What is a Chicken Tender?” Well lets digress from the recipe a bit and have a closer look from those that know:

“Chicken tenders, also known as chicken fingers, chicken strips or chicken fillets, are chicken meat prepared from the pectoralis minor muscles of the animal. These strips of white meat are located on either side of the breastbone, under the breast meat (pectoralis major).”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_fingers

“Chicken tenders are the little tenderloin portion of the breast, the one with the single string of tendon through it. When you open up a chicken breast, it runs from top to bottom, and pulls off easily.” http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070114085210AA9RcI4

Bottom line: It is a piece of the breast meat, no fat and about three bites in length. Usually sold with the chicken in the meat department (over priced at times) or in the frozen food section (usually a better value). If you go with the frozen version, they defrost rapidly and work just as well as the fresh, without the extra cost.

Lets get cooking!

Here are the ingredients:

• 8 chicken tenders
• 1 – 10 fl oz Mike’s Classic Frozen Margarita mix http://www.mikeshard.com
• Chicken rub (I used Oakridge BBQ Santa Maria Seasoning)
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh Cilantro
• 1/4 tsp Chili flakes
• 1/4 tsp minced Garlic
• 2 Limes halved
• 2 tsp sugar ( for dipping the limes into)

Using a resealable 1 gallon plastic bag add the Chicken tenders, chicken rub, chili flakes, garlic, cilantro and the Mikes Classic Margarita mix together in the bag.

Mix together well to coat all surfaces of the Chicken tenders and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Select your weapons of choice – Bamboo skewers or metal skewers. Bamboo skewers need to be soaked in water for at least one hour to prevent combustion during the grilling process.

I cooked my Chicken skewers over Natural Lump Oak Charcoal from Best of the West

Set your coals up so you have room to place the handles of the skewers away from the heat, easier to grab.

Marinated for one hour. Check out those bits of Garlic, Chili flakes and Cilantro!

Weave your marinated Margarita Chicken Tenders onto the skewers, two or three times should do the job.

Before you throw the skewers onto the grill, prep the limes.

Simply cut in half and dip into the sugar to coat.

When the charcoal is ready place the limes on the grill cut side (with the sugar) side up on the coolest section of the charcoal.

Now place your Margarita Chicken Skewers on the grill. First side cook will take about 3 minutes or until the chicken releases from the grill grates allowing you to turn them over without sticking to the grill grates.

Cook the chicken until it reaches 165° F internal temperature and serve with a lime half per skewer to squeeze over the Margarita Chicken Skewers!

I served mine with rice and a salad, delicious!!

Related Reading:

Williams-Sonoma Collection: Grilling

The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit (The Joy of Series)

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers--With information on building ... feed, and working with poultry in the garden

Bobby Flay's Grill It!

Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry

Weber's Big Book of Grilling

Poultry Science (4th Edition)

• Leave a comment... (6)

Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast is, to many cooks at the grill, a challenge. The chicken breast is thick on one end, thin on the other and void of any fat with the skin removed and flavor from the bones removed. Getting the thick side of the Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast grilled to 165° results in the thin side overcooked at 195° and as tough as a leather boot boiled to perfection.

Solution: Butterfly the Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast.

I have been doing this for years. Granted sometimes I forget and then bemoan the results, blame the dog and suffer through the tough parts hoping I have enough sauce to make it taste palatable and disguise it from the family. More beer does help…

Butterflying your chicken breast will reduce the grilling time by 50% making this a very fast grill and even faster when using a propane grill. I prefer the taste picked up from charcoal as the Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast needs all of the help it can get. Your choice!

Sorry for the unappealing photo but this emphasizes the problem. No fat, no bones, tapered with various thickness.

Take your chefs knife (which is very sharp – right?) and slice the chicken breast in the middle as pictured above until you reach the other side without cutting all of the way through. I try to stop at about 1/2 – 3/4″ so I can unfold it like a book.

Once the chicken breast is open, you’ll see it still has thicker uneven sections. We need to even the cooking surface out by taking a meat mallet, rolling pin or a bottle and gently pounding the surface till it is an even thickness all over. Now don’t worry about it being perfect, just close is good enough. You may want to save yourself the trouble of extra clean-up by placing the chicken breast in a plastic resealable bag, place it between wax paper or even plastic wrap.

If your using a propane grill, then you can skip this part, but remember to pre-heat that grill before you start cooking! Number one failure of any griller is not pre-heating their grill.

To maximize our flavor when I grill Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast, I use lump charcoal. Lump charcoal reminds me of Fourth of July here in the U.S.A. it is fun, lots of fireworks and explosions that make your heart stop. Lump charcoal is very similar to the Fourth of July – lots of sparks, explosions, excitement and a mess of ash flying around. All good stuff that results in amazing flavor when you are grilling. It’s the hot spots and the excitement that turns most people away from the best grilling results they will ever get.

Solution: 50/50 ratio of compressed charcoal briquettes and lump charcoal. Doing this results in great smokey flavor, even heat surface, less mess and limited fireworks.

Two ways to do this:

One is to start your compressed charcoal briquettes first. When they are ready, pour them into the bottom of your grill and then add the lump charcoal to the top of the compressed charcoal briquettes to ignite.

Two (is the way I do it) placing both the compressed charcoal briquettes and the lump charcoal into the charcoal chimney at the same time when I light it, then pour both into the bottom of the grill at the same time.

Now pre-heat your grill and grate – this is critical to successful grilling.

Seasoning is simply kosher salt and fresh ground pepper or use your favorite rub. Other options would be to marinade it for and hour or so before grilling. Teriyaki is the favorite around here.

With a hot grate, your ready to grill! This is a quick process, only taking a couple of minutes per side.

Place your Butterflied Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast onto the grill grate and then lightly sauce up the top side. Typically BBQ sauce would burn if you start adding it too soon but when you flip the chicken breast you will only be cooking it for a couple more minutes, just enough time to add more BBQ sauce to the cooked side before it’s ready to be pulled of the grill.

The results of grilling your Butterflied Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast this way is a fuax skin like texture on one side (slightly crisp meat surface), even cooking all around and a fast grill time. You will find your chicken breast is juicy and tender with a great presentation that you won’t have to disguise with extra sauce.

Perhaps one of my favorite techniques for a grilled chicken recipe with a no fail grilling experience!

Let me know how this works for you in the comments below!

Related Reading:

How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques, A Barbecue Bible! Cookbook

Raising Chickens For Dummies

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers--With information on building ... feed, and working with poultry in the garden

Poultry; a practical guide to the choice, breeding, rearing and management of all descriptions of fowls, turkeys, guinea-fowls, ducks, and geese, for profit and exhibition

Weber's Big Book of Grilling

The Barbecue! Bible

The Cook's Illustrated Guide To Grilling And Barbecue

• Leave a comment... (3)

Here is a super simple Lasagna recipe that will wow your friends and family, not the recipe … it’s how you will grill it! Today we are grilling Lasagna in Cedar Plank Tray!

Natures Choice Grilling planks are available at the http://www.grillingplanks.biz/

Complete recipes are available on http://www.cooking-outdoors.com website.

Cooking Outdoors Store: http://www.cooking-outdoors.com/products-page

More great recipes are available on the Cooking-Outdoors.com website or the Cooking Everything Outdoors app!

The how-to show of backyard Grilling, Dutch oven and Camp cooking. If it can be cooked indoors, I can show you how to cook it outdoors!

If you want to learn how to use Grills, Dutch ovens, Fire Pits, Foil cooking and Camp cooking, then this is the show for you! Great product reviews and new ideas. Grill it, bake it, smoke it, fry it, we can do it.

Questions? Comments? Email Gary: info@cooking-outdoors.com

Please leave a comment and a rating, thank you!

Visit http://www.Cooking-Outdoors.com for even more recipes, tips, tricks and really good times!

“Get Out of the Kitchen, Light the Fire and Start Cooking Outdoors!”

“Cooking Everything Outdoors” � 2013

Related Reading:

Wood-Fired Cooking: Techniques and Recipes for the Grill, Backyard Oven, Fireplace, and Campfire

Raising Chickens For Dummies

Planked Seafood Cookbook (Cooking on wood)

Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds

The Grilling Book: The Definitive Guide from Bon Appetit

The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit (The Joy of Series)

Sheep, Swine, and Poultry Embracing the History and Varieties of Each; The Best Modes of Breeding; Their Feeding and Management; Together with etc.

• Leave a comment... (0)