Saucy Sunday – Smoked Chicken

Before I get started with Saucy Sunday I want to say,

 HAPPY MOTHERS DAY,

to all the Mothers who visit us here at Twisted Fencepost.

I hope you have a beautiful and relaxing day!

I promised, when The Captain got a smoker for Christmas, to let you know how it works.

Here it is May and I still haven’t written a post about it.

Sorry! Please forgive me.

It’s not that we haven’t used it, it’s just that I keep forgetting to take pictures. I still don’t have all the pictures I wanted to post with this, but I’m posting it anyway.

The first time we used it, I went by some instructions I found on the internet. And the chicken was really good. But we did a little asking around and experimenting.

The first thing we do is rinse the chicken, remove the giblets and soak the chicken in a brine made with kosher salt, sugar and water. ( brine recipe posted below) I rinse the giblets and put them in a freezer bag. When I have enough for a mess, I will fry them for The Captain. Not me. Yuck!

Then drain the chicken, rinse and drain again.

Then, I apply a rub of lemon garlic and italian seasoning.

Now you must get the smoker ready. Soak some wood chips in water, I used Hickory. Then drain the water from them and add them to the pan that fits inside the bottom of the smoker. And put the pan inside the smoker.

Put the chicken on a stand and set inside the smoker.

This is one of the changes I made. The bird is much juicier if you put a can of beer inside the chicken. But that is impossible with the chicken on the stand. The stand that came with the smoker (pictured above) will not fit down over a can of beer. While I  was out shopping with my Mother-in-law one day, I found this one.

 

It was made for a can to sit inside and the chicken fits down over them both. It works much better without toppling.

Put the top on the smoker. Add the charcoal to the top and sides of the smoker and light.

Then you wait. It takes about an hour to thoroughly cook a whole chicken.

Also, I tried the marinated chicken recipe I posted earlier with the smoker and it was also delicious. The only change I made to the original recipe is that I didn’t cut up the chicken, I left it whole and I didn’t precook it. I soaked it in the brine, rinsed it and marinated it overnight in the marinated chicken recipe.

Then continued as explained in this post.

I hope this is enough information to encourage you to try smoking chicken, you won’t regret it.

Presently, I have pork ribs waiting to be smoked. The Captain is excited about this. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Salt Brine for Chicken

one cup Kosher Salt

one cup Sugar

one gallon Water

Mix all ingredients in a large container until dissolved. Add chicken, making sure it’s completely submersed. And soak for about four hours.