There are many wonderful things about outdoor grilling in the summer.
Grilling is a great excuse to spend time outdoors with family and friends.
Grilling also brings a unique flavor to food that we typically only get to savor during the summer months.
Unfortunately there is a hideous creature that shows up during many grilling sessions that tries to ruin everything.
This creature is the infamous piece of burnt and bloody chicken.
Chicken that is burnt on the outside but still bloody on the inside is a plague upon or grills that can be successfully combated with proper education.
At the heart of the burnt and bloody syndrome is the fact that the outside of the chicken starts to burn before the inside of the chicken is cooked.
By following the steps below you will eliminate this beast from your cookouts.
The first critical step is to make sure the chicken pieces you are cooking are fully thawed before they go on the grill.
While you can get good results by throwing frozen burgers on the grill this approach will be disastrous with chicken.
A frozen burger is thin and uniform in shape and composition and as a result will cook quickly and uniformly.
By contrast a chicken leg is thick on one end, thin on another and has a big bone running through the middle.
Do not ask your grill to thaw and then cook the chicken for you.
The next step is to lower the temperature on your grill.
Chicken should be cooked with medium heat, about 350 degrees.
By cooking at a lower temperature you are allowing the chicken to cook all the way through before the surface gets overheated and starts to scorch.
If your grill is large enough to allow you to do so, it is even better to cook your chicken at medium temperatures with indirect heat.
That is, cooking where the meat is not directly over the flames of burning gas or charcoal.
A third step is to not add any barbecue sauce to your chicken until the last few minutes of cooking.
Barbecue sauces contain a lot of sugar and if it is applied to the chicken at the start of cooking will be burnt within fifteen to twenty minutes.
At this point your chicken will definitely be burnt on the outside and bloody on the inside.
The last step to eliminate this problem is to use an instant reading meat thermometer to make sure the chicken is fully cooked before it is removed from the grill.
By making sure that each piece of chicken has reached an internal temperature of 170 degrees you will never serve bloody chicken again.
If you follow these steps you will never have to deal with chicken that is scorched on the outside and raw on the inside ever again.
You can enjoy your time outside with family and friends without worrying about your food.