Ordering salmon medium rare was once as obsolete as the fish are today. Raw meat seemed savage. And pork was unquestionably the other white meat.

Fortunately, this country’s standard for cooking doneness has done good, and expanded beyond the overcooked climate of the past. The evolution continues with trends in raw-food diets based entirely on uncooked ingredients. Raw corn and cashew soup made from processing ingredients into mush. Not so sure about raw, cold “soup.” It sounds like a buzz kill on a wintry kind of day.

Still, it’s progress, and its done wonders for the raw and medium rare food movement. Perhaps waiters will one day ask, when taking your order for Chicken Fricassee, how do you like your poultry? Hopefully not. Uncooked poultry isn’t just a health hazard that can teem with salmonella bacteria, but it’s also a matter of taste.

When it comes to raw chicken, I say cock a doodle don’t. There’s really just one answer to chicken doneness. It needs to be cooked. No seared, or medium, or medium rare. Just cooked through and thoroughly.

It’s chicken: 101, and there’s no need for any slimy surprises on biting into a drumstick or bloody juices dripping from a chicken leg. Especially since chicken is so popular — the no. 1 entree at many a book club as a low-carb, fat free, non-wheat, lactose-free, low-fat, flatulence-free, bland dish through which picky girls combat the evening’s wine.

There are, however, a couple different approaches to cooking chicken, and ways to graduate from cooking boring breasts of white bird. My favorite summer chicken involves two techniques: baking and grilling. You’ve heard about twice-cooked potatoes, but what about twice-cooked chicken.

It’s really clutch for bone-in pieces, which require longer cooking time. Since grilling is fast and furious, bone-in chicken pieces are best done in a low-heat oven, and then finished off on the grill. The twofold technique balances doneness — in the oven — and crispness — on the barby.

Come this time of year, there’s always an exodus to the barbecue by white-shoe-wearing summer seekers. You see it in cooking publications, plugging grilling get-togethers where smily, suntanned party-goers sit beneath Japanese lanterns sharing warm summer eves. The grill goes full throttle throwing off complete menus of grilled rosemary shrimp, Jamaican-spiced pork tenderloin and grilled peaches for desert.

I hate those perfect pictures. Around here, it’s still a little too cold for my flip-flopped tootsies to venture outside past 7 p.m. Since my household can’t seem to put dinner on the table before 9:30 p.m., the idea of barbecuing becomes a test in efficiency aiming at three trips outside max.

The urge to grill, however, has gotten into our heads. It’s easy, quick and a sure sign of summer, something that I crave as much as a medium rare burger. My husband, still skiing on weekends, isn’t so hungry for the heat. So I’ve been letting him handle the late night grilling, and since he claims to be the creator of the twice-cooked chicken, I’ll let him have at it again for tonight’s meal.

For some reason, boys have a knack for the barby. Perhaps the word itself rekindles a secret adolescent kinship to the real barbie bopping around in her hot pink corvette. Maybe tending barby makes them feel like Ken, barbie’s blond-haired hunk of a boyfriend.

I’ll bet, however, that the boy-barby connection is more a matter of meat, minimal dish cleanup and an escape from the kitchen where cooking-crazed girls go gonzo with Cuisinarts  and more. I know that’s why my dad was always flipping burgers in the backyard.

Another perk to grilling: it doesn’t require much mastery. Place, flavor, flip, flavor and remove. It sounds like a dance sequence, but its mostly about timing. If you time it right, you’ll know your medium rare steak is ready when the meat is still springy to touch. If you’re unsure, just follow a recipe, and eventually, through burgers and burnings, you’ll learn the way.

So if barbecuing is the big easy, why add an extra step and more dishes for twice-baked chicken? I’ve already explained about bone-in chicken and the barbecue’s fiery relationship, but what about me, the chef?

I want to steer clear of any food fights most certainly, but I also want to stay away from the fire pit come cocktail hour. Rather than rotate wieners, I’d circulate the crowd, and catch up with friends.

Twice-baked chicken achieves this. It keeps you out of the kitchen come party time, and it keeps the crowd pleased with its perfect doneness. The same idea goes for brats. On the grill alone, you poke and prod the little guys for a good hour, rotating them around and around until they’re charred on the outside, but still pink in the middle.

Like chicken, you got to pre-cook brats. Boil them beforehand in a hot bubbler of beer. Then, when cooked close to through, it’s time for their debut on the grill, a promotional affair where they get a deep, dark tan and the appropriate grill lines. And like the chicken, the boiling can be done ahead of time.

For chicken, there are lots of options for sauces. During the original slow-bake, which I typically allow 45 to 60 minutes at 300 degrees for bone-in thighs, breasts, whatever, it’s a good time to sauce it up. You can go asian with soy, sesame oil, tomato paste, ginger, garlic, green onion and rice vinegar or you can go classic barbecue sauce with molasses, ketchup, bourbon, mustard, hot sauce and Worcestershire. Make the desired sauce, let it cool, reserve half for dipping and use the other half for basting the meat on the grill.

When that big barbecue moment comes, follow the dance. Baste the chicken in sauce and cook each side equally, about 10-15 minutes. I often cut chicken breasts in half so everything bakes evenly. Basically, in the grilling process, you’re shooting for nice color and grill marks. Then it’s time to chow, dipping the meat in the reserved sauce.

Since you only eat once — even if it is three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year — food’s got to involve cooking in either an oven, stove or grill. Or all three...

Twice-cooked chicken with jalapeño-tequila sauce

Ingredients:

bone-in chicken pieces, breasts, thighs, drumsticks, around 8
salt
pepper
ground coriander

3/4 cup orange juice
1/4-1/2 cup tequila
1/4 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 jalapeño, chopped
1 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. brown sugar

1 Roma tomato, chopped
cilantro
1/2 lime

Oven: Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Rinse, dry and season chicken with ground coriander, salt and pepper. Bake 45-60 minutes. Cool.
Sauce: Heat pan with o.j., tequila, jalapeño — seeds in or out depending on your heat tolerance, onion, honey, brown sugar and tomato paste. Bring to boil. Reduce. Simmer for 10 minutes. Transfer to blender. Pulse and add chopped tomato and cilantro and the juice of half a lime. Reserve half of the sauce for dipping.
Grill: Heat grill on high, and add chicken, basting one side. Flip after 10 minutes or so, sauce again, then cook until done, another 10 or so minutes.
Garnish with cilantro and scallions. Serve with rice pilaf.