Sous Vide Grilled Chicken with Molasses Barbecue Sauce

By Christie Vanover | Published July 2, 2018 | Last Updated February 16, 2023

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Everywhere Agency on behalf of FoodSaver®; however, all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

We’ve all had our share of experiences with dry, rubbery chicken or undercooked chicken. But no more. It’s time for a chicken revolution. If you pre-cook your chicken using the sous vide method, it will be the juiciest chicken you’ve ever pulled off the grill.

– Learn more about sous vide cooking –

Sous vide is a fancy French word that means under vacuum. Basically, you vacuum-pack your chicken and cook it in heated water, but since it’s sealed tight in a FoodSaver® Sous-vide Vacuum Seal Bag, no water sneaks in to dilute the chicken flavor. Instead, the chicken bastes in its own juices and the fat from the skin.

I seal my sous vide bags with a FoodSaver® FM2000 Vacuum Sealing System. They’re on sale at Target throughout the month of July (2018).

You can actually season the meat, vacuum pack the chicken and freeze the bag, so the chicken is always on hand and ready for your next barbecue. You don’t even have to defrost them. The sous vide bags can go straight from freezer to sous vide pot.

Why you should sous vide your barbecue sauce

Barbecue sauce needs to be heated to help combine the flavors, but it’s usually made up of a lot of sugar. If you heat it in a pot, you have to nurse it to make sure it doesn’t burn or crystallize. If you sous vide it, you can toss it in the heated water for about an hour and get on with other tasks.

For this recipe, you’ll sous vide the chicken for about an hour. I place the bag of barbecue sauce right under the chicken in the pot and cook them at the same time.

When you remove the chicken from the bag, it will be moist and tender, but the skins will be, too. That’s where the grill comes in as the hero.

Place the breasts skin-side-down to start crisping up the skins, and brush on the molasses barbecue sauce.

Flip the birds after about 10 minutes and brush with sauce again.

When you pull these breasts off the grill and slice into them, the tender meat will glisten with juiciness.