Welcome to Danny's Barbecue

Danny Gaulden's How to Smoke Chicken

Some folks like to smoke them fast, and others slow. I've tried both methods over the years, and I prefer the in between method. I also like to do my chickens in halves, rather than whole. They take on a little more smoke, brown on both sides (which I think looks a lot nicer and they have a better flavor), plus you can apply a finishing sauce to both the outside and inside if you like. Here's how I do chicken. Take your whole chicken and remove the giblets and neck from the body cavity. Wash the chicken off in cold water and then cut it in half by cutting out the backbone, then splitting the breastbone down the middle. This will make two equal halves. Pat the halves dry with a paper towel. I apply olive oil or a good cooking oil to both the outside and inside, season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and lemon pepper. Sometimes I use a little thyme (be careful with this), or poultry seasoning. Place the chicken in a Ziploc-style bag, and let it sit for about 4 hours in the refrigerator. When you fire up the pit, bring chickens out of the refrigerator and let them sit at room temperature for as long as 30 minutes--no more. I'm kind of cautious about chicken and bacteria. I smoke my chickens at 250 to 275F and it usually takes about 3 to 3 1/2 hours. My preferred way to tell when chicken is done is by using the “shake hands” with the leg method. When you grab the end of the drumstick and move it up and down, it will move with very little resistance all the way up into the thigh area. With a little practice, you can perfect this method. Another way to know when the chicken is done is to check the internal temperature in the thigh. I like it to be 180 degrees. I’m old school on this…some like to only bring it to 170 degrees or less. I personally feel that the chicken does not turn out as tender when finished at these lower temperatures. After an hour or so of smoking, brush the skin with a little oil, and again after about 2 hours and again at 3 hours. This helps keep the skin from drying out and being tough. I smoke my chicken skin side up for about half the cooking time, and then turn it over. I'm very relaxed barbecuing chicken, for an extremely constant temperature is not that critical. Why? Because chicken is not a tough piece of meat, it cooks in a fairly short period of time, so you don't have to worry so much about small temperature spikes (for fear of burning the outside, and undercooking the inside) as one would with a brisket or pork butt. Usually one good fire will do the job without a lot of additional charcoal, wood, and fire tending. One more tip is the type of thermometer you should use for chicken and the proper way to use it. Big, thick, short stem oven thermometers with large read out heads (the kind you can use in your over and leave in the meat) are not good choices for small cuts of meat like chicken. They are not user friendly. The 5 inch, skinny stem ones with a 1 to 2 inch head work the best because they are more maneuverable when digging in around bones, cartilage, etc. They are NOT meant to be left in the meat in a heated environment. Simply take your chicken out of the pit and stick the thermometer in the thigh, “feeling” not to hit bones, etc. You will get a FALSE reading if thermometer rest on a bone. I’ve seen many people mess up their chicken by letting this happen. Don’t let this happen to you. Digital thermometers with long stems work great also.