For our first smoked chicken I'm combining and tweaking methods I found on my
favorite smoking website.
- Get some whole chicken. We bought 2 Perdue whole fryers, each one weighed about 4.5 lbs.
- Wash them and cut them in half, removing the giblets and cutting out the backbone.
- For each chicken, mix 2 quarts of water (also 64 oz or 1/2 gallon, whichever measure is most convenient to you) with 1/3 C non iodized salt and 1/4 C white sugar.
- Stir until everything is dissolved.
- Put two chicken halves in each batch of brining solution. Cover.
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| Kind of gross looking. Each container has one batch of the brining solution, and 2 chicken halves. |
- Put them in the fridge and let them soak for 4-6 hours.
- Right before it's time to take the chicken out of the brine, start the wood chips to soaking in water, if you're using them. Apple wood is recommended.
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| We soak the chips in my biggest mixing bowl. This will be our first use of apple wood, which we got from Home Depot. |
- Start the smoker.
- Rinse and dry the chicken halves, discarding the brining solution that remains.
- Mix together the dry rub. For each chicken, mix 2T onion powder, 1T white sugar, 1T paprika, 2t dried parsley, 1t garlic powder, 1t crushed oregano, 1t black pepper, 1/2t powdered cayenne pepper
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| The rub, doubled since we're smoking two chickens. |
- Coat the chicken lightly with vegetable oil.
- Put the rub on the outside and inside of the chicken.
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| The chicken is now ready for the smoker. |
- When the smoker is ready, put the chicken on the rack, skin up.
- Smoke the chicken 2-4 hours. You'll know it's done when the breast reaches 165 and the thigh is 175.
- Remove the chicken from the smoker, let it rest for 20 minutes.
- Shred. Eat as is or on a bun with yummy sauce and fixins'. Enjoy!
The breakdown from our first time
- This was delicious. The rub was good, the technique was good. Our guests, Anand & Swathi, though it was yummy.
- Shane thought that the 3.5 hours was a little too long, he would do 3 hours next time. He thought the breast meat wasn't moist enough, but I didn't notice.
- We put all four halves of the chicken on the top rack, weaving them together so the drippings would land in the bowl.
- I think putting beer in the bowl would have been good too.
