Pantry Spice Rub

makes about ¹/₂ cup,
enough to coat 4 bone-in, split breasts

NOTE: Other dried spices can be used in a similar fashion. For heat, add some cayenne pepper.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Combine all ingredients in small bowl. Rub mixture over brined and dried chicken breasts before grilling.

GRILLED CUTLETS

Without skin, boneless breasts (cutlets) are especially prone to burning and drying out on the grill. They are more difficult to cook than chicken parts with skin (which keeps in moisture) and bones (which add flavor).

However, many people don't eat chicken skin and would rather not bother with bones. If that's the case, it seems pointless to rub spices into bone-in, skin-on parts and then throw out the skin after cooking. If you don't eat skin, we think you might as well start with boneless, skinless breasts and apply the seasonings where they can be enjoyed.

Our goal was clear: develop a technique for cooking cutlets that would keep these delicate parts as moist as possible. Cutlets have almost no fat and can dry out easily with any cooking method. From our initial tests, it was clear that we needed to get them on and off the grill as quickly as possible. Cooking them over high heat and turning them just once was the best method we tested.

To make the fire quite intense, we spread a full chimney of lit charcoal out over just two-thirds of the grill. The concentrated fire shortened the cooking time by a minute or two. On gas, we just kept the burners on high the whole time and lifted the lid as infrequently as possible.

Although this fast cooking method was delivering good results, we still had some tweaking to do. The area between the tenderloin (the flap of meat at the thick part of the breast) and breast wasn't cooking through. The meat is so thick here that cooking takes a few minutes longer than for the rest of the breast. You have two options: remove the tenderloin, or leave it on and overcook most of the breast just to get the meat underneath the tenderloin cooked through. We opted to remove the tenderloins. Save them for a stir-fry or grill them with the breasts, reducing their cooking time by more than half.

We found it imperative to brush the cutlets with a bit of oil to keep them from sticking to the grill. The oil also helped keep the outer layer of meat from becoming dry and tough.

We had one last test to run: brining. In our initial tests, we used the same brine we had developed for bone-in, skin-on parts. After brining for 1¹/₂ hours, the time that works with skin-on breasts, we found that the boneless cutlets were much too salty. After much tinkering, we found that our brine worked in just 45 minutes.

While brined cutlets were juicy and well seasoned, they clearly needed a flavor boost. As with skin-on, bone-in breasts, we found that sticky glazes (such as barbecue sauce) are best applied when the meat is almost cooked through. If applied earlier, the glaze will burn.