Why You Shouldn't Put Barbecue Sauce On Your Chicken

Oftentimes, barbecue chicken is synonymous with chicken drenched in barbecue sauce. But what if the best way to barbecue your chicken is to leave the sauce on the grocery store shelf? We recently sat down with Chef Melvin Boots Johnson — owner of Harlem Biscuit Company and Boots & Bones Smokehouse — at the New York City Wine & Food Festival to get the inside scoop on how to better our barbecue. The "Chopped" Grill Master Champion had one crucial piece of advice: "Let the meat be the meat." Johnson prefers to let the natural flavors of the meat shine instead of relying upon sauce as a crutch. "I don't do sauce," he tells us exclusively, adding that the condiment is often used to "cover up mistakes."

Still, that doesn't mean Johnson is against using barbecue sauce altogether; he just doesn't think we should be smothering our chicken with it. It "has to be extra, added on." In his own restaurant, Johnson offers four different sauce options on the side so customers can try different ones and create various flavor combinations. So if you're truly a barbecue sauce fan, just make sure you're using it for the right reasons. It should complement the taste of your chicken, not compensate for a lack of flavor.

And if you do decide to use sauce, you may want to whip one up yourself. Many barbecue sauce brands on the market are ketchup-based, but since the condiment typically "has high-fructose corn syrup" (which isn't really worse than sugar), using it may result in an "overly sweet" sauce. Instead, Johnson recommends using a tomato base to give your sauce a more natural flavor and prevent any artificial sweetness.

So now that you've rethought every chicken choice you've ever made, what is the best way to whip up some barbecue chicken? For Chef Melvin Boots Johnson, it's all about enhancing those natural flavors. "You have to brine it first," he says in our exclusive chat, adding that he uses sugar, salt, cayenne, paprika, and water.

But brining your chicken isn't a last minute endeavor. The key is to brine then give it time (not to be confused with thyme — although it is one of the 11 herbs and spices KFC uses in its chicken). "Five hours is not going to do it," Johnson explains. "Let [your brine] sit overnight." If you don't give your chicken more than 24 hours, your seasoning may sit atop your chicken rather than seeping into your meat and really penetrating it with flavor. Once you've marinated your meat long enough, you head to your backyard barbecue, throw it on the grill, and let that smoke rise into the air and seep into your meat. And well, if you mess up in the process, you can always revert back to that bottle of barbecue sauce in the back of your pantry to cover up your mistakes.