Many diners think of chicken cordon bleu as boneless-skinless chicken breast, stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese, covered in bread crumbs and baked in an oven. Grilling the cordon bleu imparts bolder flavors than the oven-baked version of the dish, however. Skipping the bread crumbs cuts down on the carbs, and preparing the breasts over live charcoal allows for a flavorful cordon bleu experience.
Marinating for Moisture and Flavor
The most important step of preparing flavorful grilled chicken cordon bleu occurs several hours before grilling through a marinading process. Soaking the chicken breasts for at least three hours -- but preferably overnight -- infuses flavor and creates a moisture barrier, keeping the lean white poultry meat from drying out on the hot grill.
Choose a commercially-made marinade with a garlic and lemon juice base or make your own using a few cloves of fresh minced garlic, lemon juice and soy sauce for the mixture. Use enough marinade in a shallow baking dish or bowl so all breasts are covered, seal the dish with plastic wrap or an air-tight lid and pop it in the refrigerator until you're ready to grill.
Butterflying Before Stuffing
Grilling chicken cordon bleu requires cutting and stuffing the marinated chicken breasts prior to grilling. Remove the breasts from the marinade about 30 minutes before grilling and make a butterfly cut in each breast. You perform this cut with a sharp fillet knife, laying the breast flat on a cutting board and slicing into the breast sideways and lengthwise. The object is to form two flaps -- resembling butterfly wings --, so don't cut all the way through the breast. Rather, leave a hinge of meat on one side of the breast that runs nearly the length of the breast.
Use Indirect Heat
Grilling chicken cordon bleu requires more patience than grilling plain skinless-boneless chicken breasts. With ham and cheese stuffed inside, the breasts require longer cooking times over lower temperatures to cook through and acquire maximum flavor. You achieve this through indirect-heat grilling. In charcoal grills, this means forming two equal piles of lit coals on the sides of the grill's charcoal grate, leaving a coal-free zone in the center of the grill.
You then place the chicken breasts -- incision side up -- on the cooking grate directly above the coal-free zone, close the lid and cook them for between 30 and 40 minutes with vents wide open for maximum air flow.
Charcoal Means More Flavor
Though most gas and charcoal grills allow for the indirect-heat grilling method, charcoal grilling the cordon bleu imparts more smoky flavor than gas grilling. Using natural lump charcoal -- made from actual hardwood chunks -- produces better flavor than charcoal briquettes, which often contain fillers, binders and petroleum. Live coals also work better in tandem with hardwood smoking chips than gas grills. A blend of hickory and apple wood chips soaked in water for an hour before grilling time and tossed on the lit coals provides a natural seasoning for the cordon bleu while it cooks. Wet wood chips smolder longer on the coals, producing more smoke and, therefore, more flavor.
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