EVEN the best white-meat chicken has two main drawbacks, both stemming from its low fat content: it’s not particularly flavorful, and it dries out as you cook it. Grilling helps with the first problem by contributing smoky flavor and a nicely browned exterior, but unfortunately it makes the dryness problem even worse.

This problem is typically addressed by bathing the meat in an oil-based marinade before grilling, the idea being that this tenderizes the meat and seals in or even adds moisture. But not only does it take time, it also doesn’t work: the meat absorbs none of that fat, and the olive-oil coating simply contributes to flare-ups and the likelihood of burning. (Ironically, chicken skin is often removed, but it is a better “marinating” agent than anything else.)

The simplest way to keep breast meat moist and make it flavorful is to put fat and flavor inside — to stuff it. At its simplest, this means cutting a slit in bone-in chicken breasts and spreading a little butter or drizzling a little olive in the incision, an undemanding task that improves the meat’s flavor and texture immensely. When you mix the butter with fresh tarragon, basil, chives, roasted garlic or whatever other flavoring you like, you upgrade the results significantly.

Image Grilled chicken breast stuffed with herb butter. Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

But bone-in breasts aren’t the best vehicles for a substantial stuffing because you can’t fit much filling in a slit. If, however, you start with boneless breasts (or tenders, or cutlets or whatever you call them), and pound them to an even thickness, you can treat them as a wrapper for heftier fillings.