Today is a special day as I get to test out my smoking skills on a bunch of friends rather than just me and my family. I offered to smoke a chicken for a BBQ being held at my friend's Mike's place for his birthday, his mum's day and his daughters, which were all within a week of each other.
I asked my wife to get me a chicken and man, did she get a chicken. It was a whopping 2.7kg chicken that I marinated in lemon juice and Stubb's Chicken Rub overnight. I figured I'd go with one of the commercial rub flavour profiles, not knowing what they would enjoy, I figured this would be for the best, plus it does have a good herby flavour too.
At 8am, I fired up the pit and by 8:30am, the chicken was on with rosemary up it's butt. I, of course, used Plum chunks as my smoking source; gotta love that sweet smell / flavour. Unfortunately, as this chicken was huge, it didn't fit on the indirect side of the Smokey Joe and at 9am, I checked the chicken and it was burnt on one side because of the overhang :( It was at this point that I flipped the bird :) and made a ghetto heat shield with alfoil. The smoke was smelling great by the way, even though the pit was running real hot getting up to 500F !
At 10:30am, the chicken was just about cooked with an internal temperature of 76C and the rangehood had settled down to 350F. 15 minutes later, I took the chicken off and wrapped it in foil for the journey to my friend's house. The outer skin looked rather black on that one side that got overcooked, so I wasn't feeling very confident. I thought, just typical that I burn something when I've cooking for others.
When I arrived, it had held it's heat and was smelling great, not the disaster I thought. Even one of the attendees was like, food is food and then ripped one of the legs off and devoured it. So, despite the skin taking a bit of a beating, inside it was sweet smokey, juicy and warm.
I asked my wife to get me a chicken and man, did she get a chicken. It was a whopping 2.7kg chicken that I marinated in lemon juice and Stubb's Chicken Rub overnight. I figured I'd go with one of the commercial rub flavour profiles, not knowing what they would enjoy, I figured this would be for the best, plus it does have a good herby flavour too.
At 8am, I fired up the pit and by 8:30am, the chicken was on with rosemary up it's butt. I, of course, used Plum chunks as my smoking source; gotta love that sweet smell / flavour. Unfortunately, as this chicken was huge, it didn't fit on the indirect side of the Smokey Joe and at 9am, I checked the chicken and it was burnt on one side because of the overhang :( It was at this point that I flipped the bird :) and made a ghetto heat shield with alfoil. The smoke was smelling great by the way, even though the pit was running real hot getting up to 500F !
At 10:30am, the chicken was just about cooked with an internal temperature of 76C and the rangehood had settled down to 350F. 15 minutes later, I took the chicken off and wrapped it in foil for the journey to my friend's house. The outer skin looked rather black on that one side that got overcooked, so I wasn't feeling very confident. I thought, just typical that I burn something when I've cooking for others.
When I arrived, it had held it's heat and was smelling great, not the disaster I thought. Even one of the attendees was like, food is food and then ripped one of the legs off and devoured it. So, despite the skin taking a bit of a beating, inside it was sweet smokey, juicy and warm.
