10.3 Chicken10.3.1 Breasts[Can someone please give me a good method for smoking chicken breasts?] Editor— Chicken breasts are one of the easiest meats to barbecue. Put them in the hot smoker at 240-250F with light smoke. Breasts with bone and skin will take about 1 1/2 to 2 hours and skinless and boneless will take about an hour. On the boneless breasts, overlap the thinner ends so these do not get over cooked. The secret to perfectly-smoked chicken is to not overcook it. Here is where you need at good meat thermometer. Take the breasts off the smoker when they reach 160F internally. Note: smoked chicken will be pink even when it is done. Go by internal temperature, not color, to determine doneness. Q'n-- Here is my recipe for smoking spicy chicken breasts. Marinate 6 Chicken breasts in refrigerator 24 hours or longer. Spicy Chicken Marinade
Mix ingredients and let the chicken marinate at least 4 hours. Smoke at 200F for two hours (cooking time depends on your smoker and thickness of meat). After 2 hours transfer to grill and heat to 350F for 7 minutes turning the chicken at 3 1/2 minutes. Bill Wight-- I smoked a batch of chicken breasts using the following method and the family said it was the very best chicken they'd ever had. I used lemon wood in the NBBD. This produced a really flavorful, tender and tasty chicken. We ate the leftovers cold and they were the best cold chicken we'd ever eaten. The meat was still tender and tasty and moist. Brining is the only way to go. The combination of the smoke flavor with the lemon-pepper was outstanding. I used Tones brand of lemon pepper. It has much more dried lemon peel than pepper in it. Bill's Lemon-Pepper Smoked Chicken
Recipe makes enough for 6 large chicken breasts. Brine the chicken breasts (I used Dan Gill's brine recipe) for 2 hours in the refrigerator. Remove breasts from brine and rinse in cold running water. Pat breasts dry on paper towels. Marinate breasts in the Italian dressing in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Generously sprinkle on rub on both sides of breasts and under skin if possible. Let breasts sit in refrigerator for 1 hour. Smoke chicken breasts 240-250F with strong to medium flavor wood. Mop every 30 minutes on both sides. Remove from smoker when internal temperature in thickest part of breast reaches 155F, about 2 hours for the largest breasts. 10.3.2 Leg quarters[How about a method for smoking chicken leg quarters?] Randy Dewberry-- Fired up the old SWOCS and did some chicken leg quarters. Used about 3 good hickory chunks in the flowerpot (used to contain the wood chunks that produces the smoke) and had smoke before I reached 175F. Marinated the chicken in Balsamic vinegar for 1 hour, then put some of the chicken rub on it from "Smoke and Spice". Smoked the quarters for 2 hours at 210F (next time I am going to try 250F for chicken). Then finished on my gas grill for 15 minutes (shooting for 10 min) just to finish the chicken, wet basting with my sauce. They were as nice a looking barbecue chicken as I have ever seen and these were skinless. Juicy-tender and oh so smoky. Fellow SWOCer's, if you haven't tried your SWOCS as a short term smoker and then finish the meat off on the grill, try it. I promise you won't regret it. I used Rick's method of mixing 2 parts honey to 8 parts barbecue sauce for the final grilling. Make sure the honey is as light in color as possible for best flavor, like orange blossom honey. A stronger darker honey will overpower the chicken. Use any barbecue sauce of your choice. The honey gives it some real sticking power and makes a nice glaze. (Editor--this technique will work with any smoker, water bullet, off-set firebox--not just a SWOCS.) 10.3.3 Wings[Can someone give me a recipe for smoked chicken wings?] Don Havranek-- Don's Brined Hot Wings
Don's Poultry Brine
To make brine: Dissolve the sugar and salt in the cold water. Add spices to the vinegar, bring to a boil and let cool. Add extract and Liquid Smoke to the brine. For chicken wings: Cut up chicken wings and discard tips or use for stock. Rinse pieces in cold water. Brine wing pieces for 4 hours in above brine solution. Remove wing pieces from brine and rinse in cold water. Pat dry on paper towels. Make up sauce and add dressing and bleu cheese. Let sauce cool and pour over wing pieces. Mix well and allow wing pieces to marinate in a covered glass dish for 5-6 hours in refrigerator. Heat marinade to simmering and hold for 30 minutes. Prepare smoker and put on wing pieces when grill rack is at 230F. Smoke for about 2 hours, basing with sauce every 30-45 minutes. Serve with bleu cheese dressing. Wow these are really good. Editor-- Don's brine recipe can also be used for brining breasts, quarters or whole chickens. [I've heard about Bear's Buffalo wings but can't find the recipe. Can somebody help me here?] Bear— Bear's Buffalo wings
Cut the chicken wings up into the drumette, the middle section and the tip. Discard tips or make into stock. Deep fry the wings until the outside is chewy. You can flour the wings if ya want a lil' crust. Wings should be safely edible at this point. In a pot melt the butter add everything but the bleu cheese dressing. Bring mixture up to a good simmer add the dressing. Cook until cheese lumps dissolve to an even texture (you can still have small bb size or bigger lumps). The addition of more or less dressing will increase or decrease the heat of the wings to a point. If ya want it hotter add some habeneros, it's your life. You want to now sauce the wings. You can do this in a Tupperware bowl. Put in some wings and sauce and put on the lid and shake. You can do them by dipping them individually into the sauce with tongs. You can do them in a medium bag, or in a garbage can or garbage bag all at once. You get the idea--coat the wings with sauce. The smoker should be going. I also did this for years on the Brinkmann bullet (no water pan, grill on top of the charcoal pan at lowest height). Put in the wings at 200 to 300F and smoke with mesquite wood until sauce it totally adhered to the wings. You can touch them without getting a sauce-covered finger. Serve with Bleu cheese dressing (Marie's is the best I've had) for dipping. I don't bother cutting up no damn celery. 10.3.4 Whole chicken[How about some tips on doing whole chickens in my smoker?] Danny Gaulden-- Some folks like to smoke them fast, and others slow. I've tried both methods over the years, and I prefer the slow method. I also like to do my chickens in halves, rather than whole. They take on a little more smoke, brown on both sides (which I think looks a lot nicer and they have a better flavor), plus you can apply a finishing sauce to both the outside and inside if you like. Here's how I do chicken. Take your whole chicken and remove the giblets and neck from the body cavity. Wash the chicken off in cold water and then cut it in half through the breastbone, dividing the chicken into right and left halves. Pat the halves dry with a paper towel. I apply olive oil or a good cooking oil to both the outside and inside, season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and lemon pepper. Sometimes I use a little thyme (be careful with this), or poultry seasoning. Place the chicken in a Ziploc bag, and let it sit for about 4 hours in the refrigerator. When you fire up the smoker, bring chickens out of the refrigerator and let them sit at room temperature for as long as 30 minutes--no more. I'm kind of cautious about chicken and bacteria. I smoke my chickens at 225 to 250F and it usually takes about 3 1/12 to 4 hours. When I take my chickens off the smoker using the 'shaking-hands' technique and I measure the internal temperature, it is always between 180-185F. After an hour or so of smoking, brush the skin with a little oil, and again after about 2 hours. This helps keep the skin from drying out. Oh, make sure you smoke your chicken skin side up. If you wish to flip it over towards the end of the cooking time, fine. I'm very relaxed barbecuing chicken, for an extremely constant temperature is not that critical. Why? Because chicken is not a tough piece of meat; it cooks in a fairly short period of time, so you don't have to worry so much about temperature spikes (for fear of burning the outside, and undercooking the inside) as one would with a brisket or pork butt. I find chicken is a fairly forgiving meat to barbecue. When you can shake hands with the drumstick, and it moves freely all the way up into the thigh, it is done. Until you smoke a few and learn how to do this, I recommend that you use a thermometer to check for doneness, but always practice the shake-hands method at the same time. Using a thermometer can be difficult for beginners, for it will not read accurately if inserted next to a bone or cartilage. So be careful and make sure you insert it into the thigh; the last part of the chicken to cook. You can feel a bone if you hit one--no problem--just back off and try again. You'll figure it out after barbecuing a few. I think this is the reason so many people have trouble with chicken, and tend to undercook or overcook them. They just don't know how to tell when they are done. Once you figure this out, it's very easy to barbecue chicken, and your confidence will grow. Chickens are cheap, fun to barbecue, and taste pretty darn good too! So practice, practice, practice. Have fun, and let me know how you are doing. Editor— To make really outstanding smoked chicken, brine it first. Use Kent's brine method below or see additional methods in Section 10.5.4. After brining, you can smoke the chicken using Danny's method above or Kent's method below. DO NOT stuff a whole chicken before smoking! [Can someone tell me a few competition secrets for doing chicken?] Kent Rhodes-- Brine your chicken. For each gallon of water (enough to cover bird) use 3/4 cup kosher salt, 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, some garlic, cumin, pepper, maybe some hot sauce, or any other flavors you like. Let the whole chicken soak for about 8 hours. In your competition schedule, be sure to include enough time for brining and smoking. Wash the chicken off in cold water for about 30 seconds each, Turn the chicken over (breast down) and cut through the rib cage. Once cut, place a large knife just inside the breast bone and press down until you hear a crack. Then, turn the chicken back over and press down, this will give you two halves with the skin still intact between the two. Take some Italian dressing and rub it all under the skin. Get you hands real far up there, all the way to the leg bone. Then, rub down with your favorite rub all under the skin also. Smoke-cook as usual, and baste if needed with some more dressing, being sure to lift up skin and baste under there also. [What is 'Up the butt' chicken?] Editor--Summary of several posts-- It is a method for smoking whole chickens using a wire rack that goes in the butt cavity and holds the chicken upright during the smoking process. Some barbecuers also use a beer can, either empty or half full of water or beer in place of the wire rack. I saw whole chickens being barbecued with a 'beer can up the butt' at a barbecue competition where the barbecuers smoked the chicken in the horizontal position, breast up. It was delicious. Smoking times will be 3-4 hours at 220-250F. Use Danny's 'shaking hands with the drumstick' method to determine when it's done--internal temperature of 180-185F. [Every time I smoke a roaster chicken in my ECB it turns out real nice and tender and juicy the only problem is with the skin. The skin looks real good but when you try and eat it is like rubber. What am I doing wrong? I am smoking it at 220 to 230F according to the candy thermometer I installed at rack level.] Ed Pawlowski-- Roasting a chicken, the crispy skin is the tastiest part. Smoking a chicken, the skin is as you describe it. Two things you can do. Unlike some other meats, chicken does not have to be tenderized so it can be cooked at a higher temperature. That helps. The second is to fire up the grill and after smoking, finish the chicken on the grill. Oh, it also helps to oil the skin before putting it on the smoker.
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