Follow this classic Thai technique for grilled chicken to get juicy breast meat, tender legs, and crispy skin all at the same time.

There are dishes I miss when I'm away from a place, and then there are dishes that make me question why I ever left in the first place. For me, gai yang falls into the second category.

The first time I traveled through Thailand, I became instantly obsessed with the food. You could spend an entire day wandering the streets of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, or Nong Khai, stopping whenever something smelled good, and eat one incredible meal after another for less money than a mediocre sandwich back home. Every few yards there was another grill, another wok, another vendor selling something you'd never tasted before and that you immediately wanted again.

And yet, even among all that competition, I kept coming back to grilled chicken. To make gai yang, you start with chickens that are split in half through the breast, flattened, and threaded onto specialized bamboo tools that are designed to keep the chicken halves flat and easy to maneuver. Then you slowly grill it over charcoal until the skin turns golden and crisp. The marinade is simple—garlic, coriander root, white pepper, fish sauce, and sugar—but somehow the result tastes bigger than the sum of its parts. Add a sweet and spicy chile dipping sauce and it becomes one of the greatest chicken dishes on the planet.

Recreating the dish in my own backyard took lots of trial and error, but the real lesson was not just in nailing the flavors of gai yang; it was in the technique this dish uses, which is one that will teach you how to grill chicken successfully with a wide range of flavors and marinades. Once you learn the basics of why splitting chickens in half and pinning them flat makes them easier to grill, why cooking slowly before crisping the skin gives you better texture, how marinades actually work to improve flavor and juiciness, and how to manage a two-zone fire, you'll have a blueprint you can apply to dozens of different marinades and flavor combinations. (And if you're a member of our Cookbook Club, you'll be getting three brand new recipes this Friday that show you how to adapt this blueprint!)

Before we get to fire management and chicken geometry, let's start with the marinade. It's easy to think of marinades as flavor delivery systems, but the truth is a little more interesting than that.

Marinade Myths

Here's something: Aromatic compounds from ingredients such as garlic, cilantro stems, lemongrass, coriander, and white pepper don't actually penetrate very deeply into meat. Even after many hours of marinating, most of those flavors remain concentrated near the surface. This makes sense. We'd be in an awful lot of trouble if large, organic molecules could simply migrate into our flesh.

Salt, however, is an exception. The smaller molecule slowly works its way into the meat, dissolving some muscle proteins and helping them retain moisture during cooking. This is why marinated chicken tends to taste juicier than un-marinated chicken, even when the actual flavor differences are really only surface level.

While salt is the active ingredient in most marinades and aromatics are really mostly about surface flavor, there are some other ingredients to note:

Sugar can enhance flavor and browning, especially in recipes like American-style barbecue chicken or Thai gai yang, where the sugar is balanced out by other intensely vinegary or spicy flavors. Sugar will cause chicken to burn much faster, so be careful about not cooking too hot at any phase.

Oil can be added to help distribute flavors as many aromatic compounds are fat soluble. Oil in a marinade will also help meat brown better and inhibit sticking.

Acids like citrus juice, vinegar, or wine can help tenderize in moderation, especially in the early hours of a marinade. However, with extended stays in acidic marinades, meat will end up with a sort of chalky, "cooked" texture due to proteins coagulating.

A Bird Divided

The biggest challenge in grilling chicken is that a chicken contains two very different kinds of meat that should be cooked to two very different temperatures. Breast meat is lean and relatively low in connective tissue. Once it gets much beyond about 150°F (66°C), it starts losing moisture rapidly and can become dry and stringy. Leg meat, on the other hand, is packed with connective tissue and hard-working muscle fibers. It doesn't really become tender until it reaches at least 170°F (77°C), and I generally prefer it closer to 175°F (79°C).

Most grilled chicken recipes simply ignore this problem. They place the entire bird over the fire and hope everything finishes at roughly the same moment. Sometimes it works. More often you end up sacrificing one part of the chicken for the sake of the other. Dry breasts and chewy legs are usually the result.

Thai grill cooks solve the problem before the chicken ever reaches the grill. By removing the backbone and splitting the bird into two halves, they create a shape that cooks far more evenly. The legs become thinner, the skin is exposed more evenly to heat, and, perhaps most importantly, you gain control over where different parts of the chicken sit relative to the fire. When I grill gai yang, the legs always face toward the hotter side of the grill while the breasts remain slightly farther away. That temperature gradient helps both parts reach their ideal temperatures at nearly the same time.

Another thing you'll notice if you watch a street vendor making gai yang is that the chicken is usually secured between pieces of split bamboo. At first glance it looks like a serving trick or a convenient way to display the bird over the coals, but it actually serves a practical purpose, too.

As chicken cooks, muscle fibers contract and the bird naturally wants to curl and twist. Securing it with skewers keeps everything flat and promotes more even cooking. It also makes the chicken dramatically easier to move around the grill. Instead of wrestling with floppy chicken halves using a pair of tongs, you can lift, rotate, and flip them almost like a single piece. It's one of those small details that seems unnecessary until you've tried it both ways.

Two-Zone Advantages

What about heat levels? Great chicken is rarely cooked over high heat from start to finish.

People who, like me, instinctively began their career as a backyard cook by grilling chicken over the hottest part of the grill (because that's where browning happens, right?), know that this is a surefire recipe for chicken that's burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. The problem is that browning happens much faster than internal cooking, especially when there is a sugary marinade involved.

The trick is to flip the process on its head. Start the chicken over the cooler side of a grill set up with a two-zone fire (that is, arrange the coals under a single side of the grill, or turn on just half the burners of a gas grill) and place the lid on so that the chicken spends most of its time cooking gently with indirect heat. During this stage the breast slowly approaches about 140°F (60°C), the legs climb into the 160°s, and the fat beneath the skin gradually renders. Only once the chicken is nearly cooked through do we move it over direct heat to crisp and char the exterior.

The result is not only juicier meat but also better skin. By the time the chicken reaches the hotter side of the grill, much of the fat has already rendered out. Instead of steaming and softening, the skin crisps rapidly and develops the deep golden-brown color that makes great gai yang so irresistible.

The Flavor of White Pepper

One final detail worth mentioning is the white pepper. Many recipes treat white and black pepper as interchangeable, but they really aren't. White peppercorns are fermented before drying, which gives them a deeper, earthier aroma that is instantly recognizable throughout Southeast Asia. Black pepper tastes bright and sharp. White pepper tastes savory and slightly funky. It's one of the defining aromas of gai yang and one of the reasons the chicken smells unmistakably Thai the moment it comes off the grill.

Taken individually, none of these techniques are particularly revolutionary. Splitting the chicken, skewering it flat, cooking it indirectly, and using a salty marinade are all fairly simple ideas. What makes gai yang special is the way those ideas work together. The result is crisp skin, juicy breast meat, tender legs, and a method that can be applied to almost any grilled chicken recipe you can imagine. And once you've done it a few times, it becomes second nature.

The gai yang is fantastic, but the technique is the thing you'll keep using.

If you're a member of our Cookbook Club, you'll be getting three brand new recipes this Friday that show you how to adapt this technique with completely different flavors. And as always, I'd love to hear how you adapt the recipe to suit your own tastes.

Recipe: Gai Yang (Thai-Style Grilled Chicken)

Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.

What I love about this recipe:

Crispy skin and juicy meat every time.

Solves the problem of overcooked chicken breasts.

Works with virtually any flavor profile.

Teaches a technique you'll use for the rest of your life.

Yield: 4 to 6 servingsActive Time: 30 minutesTotal Time: 1 hour 30 minutes plus marinatingNotes: Marinate anywhere from 30 minutes to overnight.

Ingredients

For the chicken:

1 whole chicken, 4 to 5 pounds (1.8 to 2.3kg)

4 to 10 cloves of garlic

12 sprigs cilantro, including the thick stems

2 teaspoons (5g) whole white peppercorns

2 teaspoons (5g) coriander seeds

2 tablespoons (30ml) fish sauce

2 teaspoons (10ml) dark soy sauce

3 tablespoons (40g) light brown sugar or palm sugar

1 (2-inch / 5cm) piece lemongrass, tender inner portion only, finely chopped (optional)

For the dipping sauce:

3 cloves garlic

2 to 6 Thai bird chiles, thinly sliced

1/4 cup (50g) light brown sugar or palm sugar

1/4 cup (60ml) fish sauce

1/4 cup (60ml) fresh lime juice

Method

Remove the backbone from the chicken with poultry shears. Flip it over, press firmly to flatten it, then split it in half through the center of the breastbone. Thread two bamboo or metal skewers through each half, starting by threading it through the breast and towards and through the leg to hold the chicken half flat.

Combine the garlic, cilantro, white pepper, coriander, fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and lemongrass (if using) in a food processor. Process into a rough paste. Rub the marinade all over the chicken and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight.

Meanwhile, make the dipping sauce. Pound the garlic, chiles, and sugar together in a mortar and pestle until a rough paste forms. Stir in the fish sauce and lime juice and mix until the sugar dissolves.

Prepare your two-zone fire. If using a charcoal grill, light one chimney full of charcoal. When all the charcoal is lit and covered with gray ash, pour out and arrange the coals on one side of the charcoal grate. Set cooking grate in place, cover grill and allow to preheat for 5 minutes. Alternatively, if using a gas grill, set half of the burners to the highest heat setting, cover, and preheat for 10 minutes. Clean and oil the grilling grate before you start cooking.

Place the chicken skin-side up on the cooler side of the grill with the legs pointed toward the hotter side. Cover and cook until the thickest part of the breast reaches about 140°F (60°C), 35 to 50 minutes.

Flip the chicken skin-side down over the hotter side of the grill, keeping the breasts slightly farther from the hottest area than the legs. Cook until the skin is crisp and lightly charred, the breast reaches 145 to 150°F (63 to 66°C), and the legs reach at least 170°F (77°C), about 3 to 8 minutes longer.

Transfer to a cutting board and let rest for 5 minutes. Remove the skewers, carve, and serve with the dipping sauce.