Grilled, bone in, crispy skin, chicken. A common street food and easy to make. Gà Nướng is a simple Vietnamese dish. The chicken is the star and unlike it’s pork counterpart, it has minimal ingredients in order to showcase the chicken.

Chicken quarters are easy to find, They are the juiciest part of the bird, which makes them extra tasty. A way to kick it up a notch would be to butterfly your chicken.

If you’ve never butterflied a chicken before, I highly recommend it. There’s a complete tutorial here to help you. It keeps the bone intact, while laying your chicken flat.

This technique gives you more surface area for crispy crackly chicken skin that we all know and love. Best part, you get to pretend to be a butcher for a bit and once grilled there will be a huge difference. The marinade soaks in all the hard to reach areas.

Butterflying the chicken, while keeping the bone-in allows the marinade to soak in the hard to reach areas.

THE DO NOTS

We want crispy skin with juicy tender well marinated chicken. Here are important tips to set us up for success.

Do Not marinade for longer than 2 hours
Do Not cook before resting
Do Not cut before resting
Do Not forget to preheat the grill first

SPECIAL TIPS

Marinade

Whether you choose to butterfly your chicken or not, one thing is clear, it’s important to really rub in your marinade. The skin is important for grilling because it basically bastes the chicken for you. You want to pull the chicken skin back and rub it in without tearing it.

It’s important to note that we are working with vinegar. Vinegar is important to help break down the chicken and the oil allows us to impart the marinade.

Leaving chicken in vinegar can have an adverse effect in making the chicken seize up and the meat a little tougher. This is a quick marinade. No longer than 2 hours and it will be perfect!

Grilling

Preheat your grill. Always. When it comes to cooking, learning how to maintain temperature is really key in successful recipes. For bone in chicken quarters, we want the grill to be 450 degrees.

Start with the skin side down. We want to be able to pull the chicken off the grill easily to flip. The skin side has the most amount of fat and will grease your grill while getting nice crispy skin. Just in case you’re new to grilling, don’t move your chicken. Set it down and leave it for 3-5 minutes.

Temperature

In order to get the cooking times right, it’s important to make sure that your chicken has had a chance to rest prior to grilling. If it’s been in the fridge, 30 minutes should be enough time to rest.

The easiest way to check for doneness is to have a thermometer. You can always place your chicken on a plate and see if the juices run clear. Just don’t cut it. If you need to cook it longer the last thing you want to do is cut it and dry out your chicken.

The thermometer is by far the easiest way to check your temperature until you’ve cooked enough chicken to know when it’s done. 165 degrees Fahrenheit is the standard temperature for properly cooked chicken.

Perfectly grilled crispy skin, juicy chicken. Let it rest for 5 minutes before serving.

HOW YOU SHOULD EAT THIS

This recipe is amazing over rice, in the typical bun, which is the cold noodle bowls. It’s amazing in a banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches), in a gua bao, sticky rice, goi (Vietnamese salad) and whatever else you can imagine. The simplicity of this makes it perfect to pair with nuoc cham or even a Viet tradition of salt, pepper, and lime.

FINAL THOUGHTS AND NOTES:

If you’re grilling boneless, skinless chicken thighs, drop the grill temperature to 400 degrees and reduce the cooking time to approximately 8 minutes. Chicken should register at 165 degrees Fahrenheit when cooked.

If you happen to prefer boneless, skinless chicken, drop your grill temperature down to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The time to cook reduces to approximately 8 minutes. Grill for 3-4 minutes and flip to cook for another 4-5 minutes or until the chicken registers to 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

LET’S GET STARTED!