These Grilled Chicken Recipes Might Utterly Revolutionize Your Cookouts

“Grilled chicken is an excellent humble family meal, although the marinade in this recipe adds an incredible glaze worthy of a restaurant meal,” Matt Horn says in his cookbook, Horn Barbecue. “The brown sugar speeds up caramelization and deepens the flavor of the finished poultry.”

With a dead-simple marinade, this chicken comes out tangy and sweet, with just the right hint of bitterness. The only trick is: turn it frequently, to keep the sugars from burning.

A briny, flavorful marinade tenderizes and moistens the chicken and also serves as a dressing for the olive-tomato topping. Serve with sliced grilled potatoes if you like.

Don’t underestimate the power of a good wing, especially this sticky-sweet version. For a crowd, double or triple the recipe.

A sweet-and-savory main-dish salad that’s totally worthy of dinner guests.

Why settle for one use of avocados when you can pickle, purée, and grill them, all in one satisfying dish?

People flock to Santa Fe’s Pollo Asado for its mesquite-grilled chicken. The secret is the citrus and achiote seasoning, which co-owner Olivia Arizmendi learned from her sister in Mexico. They tuck the meat into telera rolls and add pickled onions, hot sauce, and shredded iceberg lettuce. Mashed avocado makes it even better.

Put the Mediterranean seasoning blend called zaatar to work to give camp chicken a complex flavor with minimal ingredients.

Tangy, fruity tamarind, popular in Latino and Asian cuisines, is the secret ingredient in one of our favorite barbecue sauces for chicken wings.

Russell Moore, chef and owner at Camino restaurant in Oakland, gave us this technique for grilling chicken breast—and it’s the juiciest version we’ve ever had, protected from overcooking by the bones and skin. “Don’t cook it too fast,” he adds. “You don’t want it burnt outside and raw inside.”

The perfect picnic chicken! Soak chicken in a buttermilk brine for extra moist and tender results, and add subtle Indian-inspired spices for a go-anywhere feast that’s miles from boring.

J. Kenji López-Alt, author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, adapted this sandwich from recipes by his Serious Eats colleague Daniel Gritzer. It’s an excellent way to use grilled-chicken leftovers. López-Alt chooses a soft, mild bun that lets the fillings shine and adds crunch with potato straws—an ingredient borrowed from cooks in Colombia, who put them on hot dogs.

Half of this intense, hearty vinaigrette goes on the chicken right before it’s cooked—less a marinade than a “pre-sauce”—and the other half gets drizzled onto the grilled chicken, creating layers of flavor without a long marinating time.

After cooking chicken cutlets, throw corn on the still-hot grill to use in this unusual, delicious salad.

The paprika delivers great smoky flavor in this main-dish salad.

Quickly cooked chicken breasts get special treatment when served over fennel and onions charred on the grill.

Designed for cilantro fans, this Indian-style chutney gives chicken breasts loads of flavor and keeps them moist in their parchment-paper packets.