For the best grilled chicken, start it off on the cooler side of a two-zone grill. Finish it off directly over the coals to crisp up the skin until crackly and charred.
Butterflying the chicken ensures that the legs will cook through before the breast meat becomes overcooked and dry.Starting the chicken on the cooler side of a two-zone grill fire renders fat and evaporates moisture from the skin while helping the bird cook through evenly.
We'll take the first three as read, focus on the fourth, and come up with a sub-list of things we can all agree upon about grilled chicken in the summer: Summer is a time for spontaneity, so perfect grilled chicken on a hot summer evening should not take all night to prepare. No overnight brining, drying, salting, or any tricks like that.
By butterflying the bird and pressing it out flat, you make the legs and thighs the most exposed parts of the chicken. They pretty much automatically cook faster than the breast meat, meaning that you can get both breast and leg meat that's finished cooking—and therefore at its juiciest—at the exact same time.
This is because when you place a cool bird over hot coals, it can't actually start crisping up until much of the moisture and fat is rendered out of the skin. With the chicken started on the cooler side of the grill, this rendering occurs as the chicken is slowly cooking, so that by the time it hits the hot side of the grill, there is very little moisture or fat left in the skin, allowing it to crisp extremely rapidly.
However, a grill adds plenty of flavor on its own, so the flavor issue is not a big deal. Cornish hens have the advantage of a vastly simplified and expedited cooking method: Because of how small and innately juicy they are, you can cook them directly over the hot coals from start to finish, without bothering with a two-level fire at all. I start them skin side up, then flip them a few minutes in, letting them completely cook through skin side down.
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