The Crabby Foodie: Smoked BBQ Chicken

Finally I get to write about my favorite food, barbecue! Nothing like cooking slow and low for many hours, imparting a lovely smoke flavor into the meat, breaking down all the fat into delicious flavor, turning even the toughest of meats into tender, juicy mouthfuls! Bringing you back to days of cowboys and the open range!

Smoking is not that difficult, and you do it on a grill using a wood chip box or in a smoker if you have one. I find you can get a lot more smoke flavor out a smoker, and after doing it a few times on the grill, I decided to invest about $200 dollars into a Landmann Smoker.

The $200 dollar one can hold 2 whole chickens or 3 briskets, or a whole lot of little things... which is usually plenty of room.

The $300 lacks the separate drawers for the water pan and the wood chip box, and opening the one door will let a lot of heat escape. This can be particularly troublesome when cooking around 225 degrees for 8+ hours and it can slow you down 30 minutes every time you open the door.

So, this time around I decided to smoke some chicken, drumsticks and thighs to be exact. I didn't have a lot of time, and these pieces of meat only need around 3 hours on the smoker to be completed.

Steps:
1. Brine in the fridge
2. Drain and rinse
3. Rub and let sit in the fridge
4. Fill the wood chunk box
5. Fill the water pan with apple juice
6. Put all your meat on the grates
7. Run the smoker around 225 degrees
8. Replace wood chunks when they stop smoking, roughly every 45 minutes.
9. Refill the water pan if it gets low, for a 3 hour smoke that wouldn't be nessasary.
10. When your meat hits the right temp (180 for chicken), Eat!!!

Some other meats require a little extra work, but I'll get into that in a future blog.

When I do chicken, I always brine the meat overnight in the fridge. This involves soaking them in a water and salt mixture, with some seasoning, to fill every tiny crevice with some moisture and flavor. Chicken can tend to dry out if you cook it slow and low for a few hours, so this helps with keeping the chicken forever juicy. It's best to use a food safe container and adjust the brine based on how much water you can fit in the container such that the chicken is fully submerged.

Brine:
1 Gallon of Water
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. onion powder
2 tsp. Cajun seasoning
2 tsp. celery seed

After a good 10-20 hour soak in the brine I drain all the water and rinse the chicken a little. Then I apply a dry rub of seasoning, rubbing it onto all the chicken. I use my own secret blend, but Dinosaur BBQ has been nice enough to share their recipe. You could use any store bought rub you like as well.

Chicken Rub:

1/2 cup paprika
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated garlic
6 tablespoons granulated onion
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

This rub comes right out of the Dinosaur BBQ cookbook. One of the best cookbooks I own. I've had well over a dozen items out of it and all have been extremely excellent, from bacon wrapped meatloaf to mac & cheese shepherd's pie.

After rubbing the rub all over your chicken, wrap them up good and let them sit in the fridge for up to a day. This time I took them out of the brine the morning I was going to smoke, put on the rub and let them sit for 6 hours until I was ready to smoke the chicken.

I use what's called a vertical smoker and it has the meat door, and two drawers. The heat source is a propane tank hooked to a burner that's on the very bottom.

The top drawer is the liquid drawer. I use apple juice. The heat to causes the juice to vaporize and provide some moisture to keep the meats above it juicy. This is an advantage of a vertical smoker.

The bottom drawer is the wood chunk box. You place 2-3 wood chunks in here, and have to swap them out about every 45 minutes to keep continuous smoke being applied to your meat. When you stop seeing any smoke rise out of the smoker you know it's time for a change of the chunks.

You want to run the smoker around 225 degrees the whole time. Put in your wood chunks and fire it up. About the time you hit 225, you should start getting some smoke from your wood chunks.

You can get wood chunks online or at most places that sell smokers like Home Depot of Bass Pro Shops. I used Hickory this time, because it would impart a strong smoke flavor and with only 3 hours of smoking, it's best to use Hickory if you like a lot of smoke flavor. You can play around with different types of woods based on what you're trying to smoke.

Here is the smoker fully loaded with all my chicken, getting ready to be loaded with smoky deliciousness!

I use some meat thermometers to make sure the meat has reached the correct temperature. For chicken I let it hit 180 degrees internally. This thermometer also captures the temperature inside the smoker. It's specifically designed to capture low temperatures required for low and slow smoking.

Here is the chicken all done cooking! Bet you wish you could have some!