Cook 6 - Hickory Pellet Smoked Chicken
22nd February, 2015 06:54 PM by BBQ Phil
It's been raining heavy all weekend but Sunday was looking to be a 10% chance of rain. Good enough for me, so I made up a slightly tweaked spice rub. This time I toned back the oregano, added ginger powder and used Garlic Salt instead of Salt. I did this because I was out of Garlic powder. To me, I thought the rub was nice. It didn't get in the way of the flavour of the chicken and gave the skin a nice bark. My wife wasn't as impressed. She called it bland and said it didn't really add much to it. She preferred last week's rub. I'm guessing toning back the oregano, also toned back the flavour for her.

The only change to this cook, I used the Hickory Pellets in my smoke box. The smoke box only has one (1) hole in it and I was wondering if that was enough to impart any of it's flavour. During the cook, there was definitely a mild hickory smell to the smoke coming out of the weber. As to whether it did anything to the chicken, if it did, it was really mild and most likely helped to mask the charcoal briquette flavour. At the end, only about 1/3 of the pellets had broken down/had a black look to them. I figured, I'll use them again next cook and see what happens.

It's all about trial and error (less trial than error hopefully) in the BBQ world. It's also fun to try new things. I think I'll use some honey or sugar in my next rub to add some sweetness. The only bad thing that happened during the cook, I took the veggies off too early and the larger potatoes weren't cooked all the way through. The small ones were awesome though; cooked with my garlic and fresh rosemary butter. Anyway, I'll know better next time.

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