Double Delicious Grilled Chicken

By Catherine Newman

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Another delicious dinner! This is an absolute favorite summer meal. The chicken is so, so succulently excellent: tangy, herby, and mouth-watering. The pre-cooking marinade makes it delightfully tender and seasoned, but then the post-cooking marinade introduces all the fantastic and fragile flavor component -- the herbs and citrus zest and garlic -- that would have burned off on the grill. Also, since you slice up the grilled chicken, you maximize the flavor-absorbing surface area. You will be a hero to your family and dinner guests. Seriously.

Hands-On Time: 20 minutes
Ready In: 2 hours
Yield: 8 servings

For the chicken and the first marinade:
8 small skinless, boneless chicken breasts, trimmed of fat and (shudder) gristle
The juice of 1/2 a large, juicy lime (scant 1/4 cup--if your limes are small, you'll need more of them)
1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions

Stir together the lime juice, soy sauce, olive oil, and salt, then pour it over the chicken in a large dish, tossing the chicken to make sure it's all covered with the marinade.
Cover the dish and leave the chicken in the fridge to marinate for an hour or so (too much longer than that and the acid in the lime juice can make it mushy).
Preheat your grill or broiler, and grill or broil the chicken (drained from the marinade, which you then discard) turning it once, until it's cooked through, around 3 or 4 minutes per side.
Let the chicken rest for a minute, then slice it against the grain and toss it with the second marinade in a wide serving dish. Serve warm or at room temperature.

For the second marinade, whisk together:
The zest and juice of 1 large, juicy lime plus the zest from the 1/2 you already juiced (zest the limes before juicing them)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
A large handful of cilantro, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, peeled and pressed through a garlic press
Freshly ground pepper

*Ingredient Tips
There are many different ways to make this, of course: sometimes I use lemons instead of limes, and switch the herbs to lemon thyme and parsley, or else basil. Yum. Sometimes I add a bit of chopped shallot or scallion to the first marinade or a bit of chipotle puree to the second. Sometimes, I leave some of the grilled chicken out of the second marinade and serve it plain. It is still delicious, just not so zingy. As you would imagine, this chicken also makes an excellent addition to salads.

Note
Our chicken breasts were really quite small -- around 2 pounds total. If yours are large, buy four and halve each into two skinny cutlets.