My First Chicken, my 3rd time smoking... ever

The Brine

2 qt water

1/2 qt ice (a little more will not hurt anything)

1 C beer

1 qt Cranberry, pomegranate, cherry juice

3/4 C salt

1/2 c sugar

4 bay leaves

couple sprigs of thyme

1 5.5Lb chicken (without the popup timer)

Bring 1 QT of water, sugar, salt and bay leaves to boil. Stir the mixture to make sure the salt and sugar has dissolved.  Remove
from heat. Add juice, ice and beer, remaining water and thyme. Put in fridge and chill.
There is no rushing this part. It will take a few hours. I guess you
could freeze the juice in ice trays and could speed things up that way
but whatever. Once the brine is chilled put the whole chicken whole
chicken in the brine and soak overnight (10 –12 hours is good), I used a
stockpot to boil the brine in and it was also big enough to put the
chicken in. Just a friendly reminder, remove the bag of crap that is
inside of the chicken before brining it. When you pull the chicken out
of the brine you will be able to see where the chicken was touching
something and the juice did not stain it. It makes the chicken look sick
but don’t worry you will never be able to tell once you start cooking.

Dry Rub

1 T salt

3/4 T pepper

1 T garlic powder

Stuffing

1 Apple cut into 1/8s

A few leaves of sage and a few sprigs of thyme

Mix spices.
Remove the chicken from brine. Season chicken both inside and out. Stuff
the chicken with a few sprigs of thyme, sliced apples and a few leaves
of sage. Take 2 sage leaves and 2 sprigs of thyme and put one of each
under the skin of each breast.

Baste

1 C beer

1 C chicken broth

1/4 C tiger sauce

Mix all of the wet ingredients together. Get a turkey baster for application.

Now comes the
fun part. Pull the chicken out of the fridge while you are prepping the
grill. This will help bring it up to cooking temperature. 

Pre-heat the
egg to 250 degrees  with the plate setter in place legs up. I put the chicken in the
egg roasting basket and made an aluminum drip pan to put under it to
catch the chicken goodness. While the smoker is coming up to temp and
stabilizing I soaked 2 cups of cherry wood chips in water. Once you get
your temp stable and holding at close to 250 it is show time. Throw the
wood chips in the fire, put the chicken on the grate and close the lid
and let the Egg do the work. The chicken should be basted about every 30
– 45 minutes.  The 5.5 Lb bird was done in 3 Hours and 45 minutes and given 15 minutes to rest after it was finished.

  

Put
the sweet taters on grill when you put chicken on the grill. I put them
on about an hour into the cooking process and they needed about 15
minutes in the oven to finish them off. Thankfully the G/F was baking
something and I had a hot oven handy to do the trick.

Eat it like a
cave man. Rip that bird to shreds with your hands and let it
know who is boss. No chicken gets out of here alive. 



Serves 4 Cave people or can be used as a snack if Vince Wilfork shows up at your door looking for his chicken.

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