Smoked Chicken

There’s a BBQ place here Vince likes. The last time he got food there, he ordered two half chickens, each comes with one side and bread and it was about $20. I love smoked chicken and it was good but I think what I smoke is just as good or better.

We have two Cookshack smoker. This is the smaller one that we got in 2005 and we have used the heck out of it. We decided we wanted a larger one for smoking sausage, boudin and smoking several large pieces of meat at one time.

The small one has always sat on a rolling cart. In Kentucky, I had it at the house in town and we didn’t have a covered porch so I had a cover for the smoker and it worked quite well.

In Missouri the first time, I didn’t have a covered porch so we kept it in the garage. If it was raining, I’d roll it to the front stoop, where there was one step and I could get it up that step. In Texas, we have huge covered porches so the small one stayed on the front porch and the larger one sat on a cabinet under the carport.

Here, we have no covered porches again so I probably won’t be smoking on days when it’s raining. If Vince builds a shop here, he’ll make sure to have room in the shop to store the smokers, and a cover of some kind where we can smoke even if it’s raining.

Back to the smoked chicken discussion . . I told Vince I wanted to smoke a chicken while the one he got out was fresh on his mind. I took a small whole chicken out of the freezer a couple of days ago, seasoned it up last night and smoked it today. I prefer the small chickens for just the two of us. The big ones sometimes are dry and a bit tough. The chicken was $3.58. Vince looked at it and said . . this is no less than what we got at the restaurant and I paid $20+ plus for that and you paid $3.58 for this one? Yep . . that’s one of the many reasons I prefer to eat at home!

The smoker doesn’t make the skin crispy. Sorry for the blurry picture but I took it out of the smoker when it was done, put it in the convection oven for about 10 minutes and the skin was nice and crispy.

I had potato salad, beans and chicken. Vince said it was better than the restaurant chicken but he would say that knowing the cost was so much less.

Here’s what I did:

• Once the chicken was defrosted, I dried it off, rubbed the skin down with mayonnaise (You could use olive oil – anything to keep the skin from drying out and cracking during the long smoking time). Seasoned it with salt, pepper and cajun seasoning. Stuck it back in the fridge.
• Using 2 ounces of hickory in the Cookshack, I smoked it at 250 degrees for about 3 hours – til the thigh temp was 170. Larger chickens may take up to 4 hours to reach 170 and with a larger chicken, I go to about 173 because it isn’t going to cook so fast in the convection oven.
• Removed it from the smoker. Put it in the convection oven at 375 for about 12 minutes. It kept cooking while in the convection oven til the thigh reached 175.

That’s it! Yummy dinner.

Then I boiled the bones/skin and made smoky broth for beans. I’m not crazy about smoked broth for soups or stews but do like it in beans. I’ll get it canned today – probably 3 or 4 quarts.