23 Grilled Chicken Recipes to Devour on July Fourth

From whole chickens to kebabs, wings, and juicy thighs, these grilled chicken recipes won't disappoint.

Grilled chicken doesn't have to be stringy and flavorless—use the right technique and it'll be perfectly juicy and still have shatteringly crispy skin. And, of course, it'll taste great, too. To show you how it's done, we've rounded up 23 of our favorite grilled chicken recipes, from a simple spatchcocked bird and Thai-style satay to homemade chicken souvlaki. Need more chicken grilling inspiration? Check out the rest of our favorite grilled chicken recipes for whole birds, wings, skewers and more.

Grilled Butterflied Chicken

Spatchcocking works just as well for grilling as it does for roasting—we never cook a whole bird any other way. To cook the chicken, we use a two-step process, starting with the chicken skin-side up on the cooler side of the grill before finishing it over the coals to crisp up the skin.

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The Best Barbecue Chicken

Bigger birds aren't well-suited to conventional grilling because it's hard to cook them through evenly. Barbecue is the way to go for roasting large chickens—the low-and-slow technique cooks them gently and imbues them with tons of smoke. For extra flavor, we like to brush the chicken with barbecue sauce toward the end of cooking.

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The Best Juicy Grilled Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts tend to be bland and dry, but that doesn't keep them from being one of the most popular cuts of meat in America. If you're going to give chicken breasts space on the grill, treat them right by pounding them to a uniform thickness, brining them, and using an instant-read thermometer to avoid overcooking them.

List Link: The Best Juicy Grilled Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts

The Best Grilled Chicken Sandwich Ever

This juicy, drippy, and indulgent chicken sandwich is surprisingly quick to make. With alternating layers of mayonnaise, crushed potato chips, a flavorful jalapeño-avocado sauce, lettuce, and tomato, it delivers a range of textures, from crisp and crunchy to soft, tender, and juicy.

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Peruvian-Style Grilled Chicken With Green Sauce

The chicken itself in this recipe is nothing too special—just a spatchcocked bird rubbed with salt, cumin, paprika, pepper, garlic, vinegar, and oil before grilling. The real magic of Peruvian grilled chicken is in the spicy-yet-cooling green sauce, which is made with a mayo and sour cream base and flavored with jalapeños, cilantro, and aji amarillo pepper paste. Make extra, because you're going to want to put it on everything.

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Thai-Style Grilled Chicken (Gai Yang)

Without question, the best grilled chicken we've ever had was in Thailand. In a country full of wonderful grilled meat, the chicken stands out. The secret is marinating the meat with fish sauce and sugar, which helps create an intense, caramelized crust on the grill.

List Link: Thai-Style Grilled Chicken (Gai Yang)

Chicken Inasal (Filipino Grilled Chicken)

In this Filipino dish, we marinate the chicken in vinegar, citrus juice, and lemon-lime soda to tenderize the meat. Brushing the chicken with annatto oil gives it an added layer of flavor and aroma and keeps the chicken from drying out. The street food is typically served with white or garlic rice and sawsawan, a vinegary dipping sauce.

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Grilled Tamarind Chicken Thighs

This grilled chicken recipe is inspired by Filipino sinigang. Incorporating dried spices as well as their fresh counterparts intensifies the flavor of the marinade, while tamarind paste, a highly acidic ingredient, acts as both a flavoring agent and a tenderizer when applied to the chicken. When grilling, starting the chicken skin side up and finishing skin side down yields crispier skin.

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Jamaican Pan Chicken

Marinated with fragrant island spices like Scotch bonnet pepper, scallion, and thyme, pan chicken is hot, smoky, and tender—the ultimate Jamaican fast food. We rub the marinade under the chicken skin to ensure the seasoning and flavor penetrate more deeply. Cooking the chicken first away from the direct heat of the coals allows the meat to cook through before finishing it over the embers for satisfying browning and char.

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Chicken Souvlaki With Tzatziki Sauce and Greek Salad

With a double-duty marinade, it's easy to pull together this Mediterranean feast at home—and if you don't have an outdoor barbecue, a grill pan on the stovetop does the trick.

List Link: Chicken Souvlaki With Tzatziki Sauce and Greek Salad

Grilled Cajun Chicken Wings

If you're going to do the air-drying step of preparing chicken wings, you can also add seasonings to the mix—for these Cajun-inspired wings, we mix paprika, garlic powder, thyme, oregano, cayenne, and more in with the salt and baking powder. After grilling, we toss the wings in a Buffalo-style sauce that replaces the usual Frank's with Louisiana-style hot sauce.

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Hawaiian Huli Huli Grilled Chicken Wings

These sticky, sweet, and smoky wings are inspired by the flavors that are often used in Hawaii. They marinate in a mixture of pineapple juice, soy sauce, light brown sugar, and sriracha, along with a few other flavor-packed ingredients. Once the wings are grilled to golden-brown, with nice charred bits from the flames, they're showered with thinly sliced scallions and served with grilled pineapple.

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Grilled Turkish-Style Chicken Wings

These wings rely on a unique, super efficient kebab set-up for your grill. By balancing the skewers on bricks set on either side of the charcoal, we're able to cook the wings more evenly and get a nice fire-kissed crust on the skin. This recipe involves a Turkish kebab shop–inspired blend of hot Turkish pepper paste, olive oil, spices, parsley, garlic, and pomegranate molasses, which doubles as a marinade and dipping sauce.

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Grilled Chicken and Peach Saltimbocca Skewers

If you've got your skewers and chicken out already, you could also give this combination of chicken, sage, prosciutto, and peach a try. The meat and fruit take a brief bath in a white wine marinade, which adds flavor even as it helps the chicken retain its moisture on the grill, and that same marinade gets reduced and served alongside as a dipping sauce.

List Link: Get the recipe for Grilled Chicken and Peach Saltimbocca Skewers

Grilled Tarragon-Mustard Chicken Skewers

It doesn't take a lot of time or ingredients to turn chicken from boring to bright, flavorful, and exciting. The marinade for these skewers combines Dijon mustard, lemon juice, honey, and tarragon. The honey caramelizes over the grill, while the lemon and tarragon keep the skewers tasting fresh and balanced.

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Grilled Tandoori Chicken Patties With Jalapeño-Mint Yogurt Sauce

These grilled tandoori chicken patties are a great alternative to the beef or chicken burgers people normally choose to do at Independence Day cookouts. Inspired by tandoori chicken, we toss ground chicken with yogurt and Indian spices, then grill the patties until they're lightly charred. Before serving, we top the patties with a tangy yogurt sauce and wrap them in toasted flatbread.

List Link: Grilled Tandoori Chicken Patties With Jalapeño-Mint Yogurt Sauce

Korean-Style Fire Chicken (Buldak) With Cheese

This Korean bar food is perfect for a beer-filled cookout. Chicken thighs marinated in a spicy gochujang-based sauce are grilled until nicely charred. The crisp thighs are then covered in melty mozzarella, which cuts through the spicy-sweet marinade.

List Link: Korean-Style Fire Chicken (Buldak) With Cheese

Japanese Chicken Skewers With Scallion (Negima Yakitori)

The average yakitori joint will serve dozens of cuts of chicken, but at home, it's easiest to stick with boneless, skinless chicken thighs, which are good for grilling because they're harder to overcook than breasts. These skewers are super easy—just alternate the chicken with big pieces of scallion, grill, and glaze with teriyaki sauce. If you want a riff on the same theme, you could also try grilling up some skewers with nanbansu, a sweet-sour sauce that can pull double duty as a dip and a marinade.

List Link: Japanese Chicken Skewers With Scallion (Negima Yakitori)

Jerk Chicken

The marinade for Jamaican jerk chicken is pretty straightforward—allspice, thyme, and Scotch bonnet peppers will get you that classic jerk flavor, and habaneros make fine replacements for the Scotch bonnets. Unfortunately, true jerk chicken is smoked over hard-to-find pimento wood. The good news? Using bay leaves instead works remarkably well.

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Grilled Chicken With Za'atar

Moving from the Caribbean to the Middle East, this recipe seasons grilled chicken with the earthy spice blend za'atar. You can easily find a store-bought version of this mix of sesame seeds, sumac, and other herbs, but our homemade version is worth the small amount of extra effort.

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Greek-Style Grilled Chicken With Oregano, Garlic, Lemon, and Olive Oil

Sprinkling chicken with lemon juice as it grills is a typical Greek technique that sounds great until you realize that the juice keeps the skin from crisping up until long after the meat overcooks. To get the same flavors without sacrificing the quality of the chicken, we make a lemon-heavy vinaigrette and use it as both a marinade and sauce.

List Link: Greek-Style Grilled Chicken With Oregano, Garlic, Lemon, and Olive Oil

Thai-Style Chicken Satay With Peanut-Tamarind Dipping Sauce

In American Thai restaurants, satay is the grilled chicken dish you're most likely to find on the menu. Our version is marinated with coriander, white pepper, palm sugar, garlic, ginger, shallot, turmeric, lemongrass, and a handful of other ingredients, and served with a tamarind-peanut dipping sauce.

List Link: Thai-Style Chicken Satay With Peanut-Tamarind Dipping Sauce

Planked Chicken Quarters With Lemon and Herb

If you're not going to cook with wood, then next best option is to cook on wood. Here, we cook chicken over wood planks set on the grates of the grill to give it a little bit of wood flavor. We use a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, and fresh herbs to both marinate and baste the chicken to keep it moist.

List Link: Planked Chicken Quarters With Lemon and Herb