Smokin' Chicken

eznosow

I grill chicken regularly: spatchcocked, vertically (beer canned), or in pieces, but I'd never tried barbecuing one until tonight, two months into my Egghood.  Applied a rub to a four pound bird last night, brought the Egg up to 230, added a few handfuls of cherry wood, and smoked it for a little under 3.5 hours. It was good! The skin, predictably, was not as crisp as it gets via other methods (though I did crank it for the last ten minutes), but the meat was tender and the smoke was great. I don't think this will become my go-to technique for whole chicken but it's definitely in the line up.

On to the food pron:

Dancing chicken:
 

Break dancing / spinning chicken:


Broke down chicken:

Ozzie_Isaac

Lookin good!  I would be all over that.

Foghorn

Ditto. I'd hit that all night long. 

Stormbringer

Awesome jointed shot.

johnnyp

I'd crush it

saluki2007

Great job.  I love cherry smoke on chicken.  Have you tried letting it go a little bit longer and pulled instead of cutting into sections?  That's my goto for smoked chicken.

lousubcap

Great result and color.  For your next low&slow chix, as mentioned above by @saluki2007, give pulled chix a go.  Try the search feature as @Mattman3969 has a great recipe.  I have run it at 220-240*F for around 8 hours.  A whole new experience.  FWIW-

MeTed

Nice post, smoked is my favorite way to cook chicken. Sometimes I cut into pieces and sometimes I spatchcock it. But I cook at 250 indirect for about 5 hours, putting corn on the cob on the last hour and a half. You are right about the cherry,great flavor and color. I am heading out right now to light the Egg and smoke two of them!

CigarCityEgger

Looks killer 

Theophan

I don' usually like a lot of smoke on chicken (main exception is jerk, where I do), but I gotta say that looks great and I may have to try it sometime.

gbvinla

You can't argue with success. Good looking cook there.

Teefus

Nice job. I'll do big packs of chicken legs that way. The meat is almost falling off the bone when they're done and the smoke flavor is fantastic. Boneless thighs work great too. I will say that while dark meat works great, breasts do not fare as well. They tend to get a little dry.

eznosow

saluki2007 said:

Great job.  I love cherry smoke on chicken.  Have you tried letting it go a little bit longer and pulled instead of cutting into sections?  That's my goto for smoked chicken.

This was my first try smoking a chicken. I did read about the possibility of a pulled chicken, but I was skeptical--does chicken really have enough collagen to break down in that way? Interesting. Thanks for the compliment!

nolaegghead

eznosow said:

saluki2007 said:

Great job.  I love cherry smoke on chicken.  Have you tried letting it go a little bit longer and pulled instead of cutting into sections?  That's my goto for smoked chicken.

This was my first try smoking a chicken. I did read about the possibility of a pulled chicken, but I was skeptical--does chicken really have enough collagen to break down in that way? Interesting. Thanks for the compliment!

Looks great!

Collagen isn't a requirement for pulled meat.  You can pull anything if it's cooked enough.  Something connects all the cells and muscle fibers and all that, and that something can be cooked enough to pull.

Typically we do cook the bejesus out of stuff that's tough with plenty of collagen and connective tissue, but you can pull a filet mignon enough to pull.  It's not always an improvement, however, as the gelatin from the collagen makes it seem moist, as does fat.  Nothing you can't add post-morten though. 

SmokingPiney

Great color on that bird.

Well done!