Direct chicken advice!

I've never had luck with direct. I always cook my chicken spatchcock over the platesetter at about 425-450 for 1 - 1-1/2 hrs. Works out great but I can see wanting to have a little bit of blackened edges or grill markes.

If you have good gloves, you could cook the chicken direct until you have established a good sear and then take everything out and put the platesetter in and finish the chicken indirect. This might be a good option.

I do mine indirect but hot, around 500. That way everything gets nice,dark and crispy and the drippings go into a pan.

Walt

I get pretty tasty skin by cooking skin-side down for 10-15 minutes, then flipping the bird and cooking it skin side up for the remaining time. Works for me...a restrained basting with herbed oil or butter about 15-20 minutes before it's done helps to nudge things toward the crispy.

 
Chicken is one of the easiest and most rewarding cooks on an egg. Direct, indirect, extended direct cooking all work out great if the chicken is cooked to temperature.

The acrid smoke feel and taste is most likely due to your lump and or smoke wood not being stabilized. Introducing a lot of smoke wood after the egg is stabilized or allowing the smoke wood to ignite into flame when opening the dome for a few minutes will also increase the acrid affects you mentioned above.

Once you have a light to clear blue smoke you are ready to cook. You will get the smoke into the bird without a heavy presence of smoke coming out of the egg.

A visual guide to - Good & Bad Smoke

For a extremely moist breast I cook the breast, legs and thighs to 165°. For a different texture and flavor I take the bird to 190°. Both produce a wonderful taste and texture.

I use a raised grid on most all my cooking including chicken. If you don't have a way to go raised grid then lower the lump level in the egg and for the most part you will have the same effect. Whole chicken takes about 45 minutes to 1hr 25 minutes depending on the dome temperature. No matter the temperature always the same great tasting bird.


I haven't bothered to trim any fat. I only wash the bird, pat dry, put some oil on the skin and coat the skin with the "rub of the day" (any rub I am in the mood for or that is easy to find).

Here are some results with different cook temperatures.

345°


400°


500°


This is a long low and slow extremely raised direct cook. 225° grate& 16.5" from lump bed to food grate.





All the above cooks will produce results like this.


This link should be useful to you also. FAQ's and other Tips

GG

Hi Celeste-I tried that with a spatchcock chicken on Sunday. I think the bigger the birds are, the more difficult the skin is. I had an almost 7 lb bird and I went about 40 minutes skin down at 350 before I turned it over. Chicken was good but the skin was edible but not crispy. a very thin layer of the meat behind the skin had started to dry.

i had issues with the chicken fat buring on the platesetter with a beer can chicken. wife did not like the taste. I thought I had it figured out. but didn't come out good. going to go back to spatchcocked, indirect. at 350-375..

What's the approx cooking time at 500*? Can't be very long...

Some great looking chicken Kent

Rest my case...you're the Master. Thanks for all the great advice...hope you are well on your way to recovery.

 
No expert here by any means. These are just basic chicken cooks.

Thanks, I am a long ways away from being better, but one step at a time and I will get there.

Kent

Welcome to the neighborhood....

It's weird you are getting black smoke, chicken fat usually produces white smoke. No disrespect here, but are you adding sauce to your chicken during the main part of the cook? The bitter flavor usually comes from a fire that has not settled down or from too much flavor wood.

You have a good question, most folks think that a chicken cook is a no brainer, but the truth is... it's an involved cook. It's one of the few things that backyard barbecuists cook that is a whole animal, or one they can cut-up themselves. (okay seafood doesn't count here) The worst thing is, a chicken is made up of muscles that cook at different rates and are done at different temperatures. Think breast and thigh... The good thing is, once you master chicken, a lot of other things come easy.

Back to your question.... the others that have recommended cooking with a raised grate have the logical answer as the height acts as a buffer to the heat, and allows a larger window for errors (like overcooking). That's how I cook most of mine, but before you take the easy way out, master the cook with the grate with the regular position. Then cooking raised direct will be simple. In fact start with skinless chicken and get it right, then move to skin-on chicken, then to halves, then to whole birds. Here are some boneless skinless breasts cooked direct with the grate in the regular position. I used a medium fire, they were turned often enough to balance the doneness and keep the color golden. I pulled them at 160°.