Spatchocked vs. Whole Smoked

Smoking Coles

Hey all, I've had my eggs for about two years, and never done a spatchocked chicken. I done tons of smoked whole or beer can type chicken with great success, though as most would agree it's hard to mess those up. I usually do chickens indirect and see that spatchoked is direct. What is the real benefits of spatchocked vs. smoked whole indirect? Crisp skin, evenly cooked? Going to try it, but wondered what the all the "hoopla" is about. Thanks.

Shiff

I've made Spatchcock Chicken twice now and they came out great. I do it direct at 350 degrees. One of the best parts to me was that the breast meat didn't get dried out while waiting for the thigh meat to get to the correct temperature. It took about an hour and everything was properly cooked and juicy.

fishlessman

for one, you get to drink that beer. i cook chicken all three of those ways, always direct. its more an internal temp that makes moist chicken and with the spatchcock you can carmalize a bbq sauce nicer laying flat and flipping

Grandpas Grub

 
It seems spatchcock will cook a little faster than whole. Although very subjective, I think I get a little more smoke flavor in spactchcock.

Skin, because the chicken is flat will be a little more uniform.

Cooking temperature, like whole chicken can be cooked up to 500°, which i8s as high as I have done when cooking chicken. It can be cooked direct or indirect. I like both whole & spatchcock direct on a raised grid.

I enjoy both a high temperature chicken cook and a low lump level, raised grid with a 225° - 250° dome chicken cook.

GG

Mickey

If you want BBQ sauce put on spatchedcocked the last 15 min's and so much easyer to turn the one peace.

NibbleMeThis

I spatchcock my birds whether I'm smoking them indirect or grilling them direct.

The general assumption is that the grate temp and dome temp are about 25 degrees different. If I have a spatched bird it's only about 4 inches tall off of the grate and cooking at pretty much the same temps. If I stand him up, the top is cooking at closer to 250f while the lower parts are cooking at 225f.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it