Why Putting BBQ Sauce On Chicken Is A Mistake (And What To Do Instead)

For many chefs and fans of barbecuing in general, high-quality BBQ sauce can make a passable dish taste good and a good dish taste even better. However, regardless of whether you're following a homemade BBQ sauce recipe or using one of the many great Carolina BBQ sauces on the market, the key sauce is not the best additive when it comes to cooking chicken on the grill or on the stove. In fact, most sauces that you'd usually put on chicken should be kept off it, so as to avoid compromising the dish's taste and texture.

This advice was relayed to us by Chip Carter, host and producer of "Where The Food Comes From," who describes using BBQ sauce in a grilled chicken recipe as incredibly detrimental to the dish. "It could totally ruin the chicken," Carter warns. "The sugars in sauces can go from delectably gooey and clingy to charred and something your guests will be surreptitiously spitting into napkins. There is absolutely no way to sauce chicken ahead of time and grill without burning the sauce (unless you like pink chicken)."

Now, it's important to remember that this doesn't necessarily mean you should completely remove the concept of BBQ chicken from your recipe book. Instead, you need to be much more conscious of when you add it and what kind of sauce you use. Furthermore, the best time to add sauce isn't actually after the chicken is completely done cooking, but at a slightly earlier point in the cooking process. 

As Chip Carter explains, "You can add sauce to chicken after cooking, but that usually just makes a mess, [and] the sauce drips off the hot meat [...] if you want barbecued chicken, pieces or whole bird, you're going to almost finish cooking before you sauce. Use a thicker sauce and brush on, or pour and spread with a spatula."

Not only does adding BBQ sauce to chicken in its final minutes of cooking prevent the sauce from sticking to your grill, but it can also yield the best-tasting marriage of the two components, giving the sauce just enough time to caramelize and infuse the poultry without burning. Furthermore, if you do want to add something to your chicken so that it obtains more flavor as it cooks, using a marinade in which you soak your chicken in for hours beforehand — provides flavor and helps tenderize your meat, making it a much better option when you're in the early stages of the chicken-making process.