cornish hens for christmas dinner

ashevilleegg

was thinking about doing cornish hens for 12 adults, 1 per adult for christmas dinner.  i have a large egg & adjustable rig w/ three grates available, so i'll have to spatchcock to fit them all.  i'm torn between direct & indirect for this many birds & the timing of the food.  direct at 350 would take about an hour-ish but leaves little room for error.  if i go indirect, i'm unsure of temp & how long indirect would take for this many birds. Any suggestions or success stories?

Skrullb

I cooked 4 whole hens, stuffed and did them indirect at about 325. They took less than 2 hours. 

keepervodeflame

Love Egged Hens, I really like indirect and get very consistent results I cook them at 375 to 400 over a deflector and drip pan. Usually 45 min to an hour and change.  Your AR and 3 grates should be able to do the deed. However, as an alternative, if you find you need the space, I have done them vertical / beer can style using tomato juice or 100 cal small soda cans to stand them upright. They came out great and did not take up much room on the grill at all. Merry Christmas and happy cooking. Bringing all twelve to the table  stacked on a large round platter with greens would be quite an impressive presentation. Ihavent cooked twelve but I have done 8 a few times and the times seemed to be equal to when I just cook two. I would use a probe in one hen and then check the rest with a thermapen just to be sure they are good to go.  

Mickey

Mickey

The top and middle row is going to be indirect. I would cook DIRECT and switching the 3 rows at 400. THIS IS GOING TO BE SOME WORK, but doable. 

jlsm

Unless your hens are tiny, a whole one per person is a ton of food. I know the presentation is cool, but you'll end up with waste.

minniemoh

If you spatch them and use the AR, you may need to rotate grids during the cook. I would go indirect so you have a little more margin for error and less flare ups but I've never cooked spatched hens. Your cook should be a lot less labor intensive and quicker than stuffed birds.

My brother-in-law and his wife buy them for a Christmas feed every year. For the past 3 years, I've been recruited to do the cook. They do all the prep - I just stand by the eggs and drink beer, baste with butter, shuffle the birds around, drink beer, baste with butter. Repeat until all are done.

Last year we did 20 hens but I can't remember how we fit them all. They like the butter baste method and to get them all to brown evenly, it required constant flipping/turning/rotating since there were so many packed in the eggs. I know that I can fit 5 on my MBGE and 4 on the SBGE. I guess that means we had 11 on the LBGE on two grids. I have attached the only pics I can find of the cooks from the past couple of years. Since these are stuffed, I believe we went 325 indirect with raised drip pans to keep the butter flare ups to a minimum.