How to Smoke Chicken

look at this juice look at that juice juice Hello guys, welcome to the mad scientist's barbecue. I'm jeremy yoder and today I'm going to address something that comes up all the time. I love barbecue, but sometimes I don't have 6 hours and 12 hours. or even 16 hours to spend making barbecue so I have to make something faster because I want a real smoky flavor and I want to eat real meat but I don't have time to make brisket, pork butt, ribs or something so today I'm going to show you exactly how to make amazing

smoke

d

chicken

where you get

smoke

d

chicken

that's flavorful, juicy and tender, all three are the trifecta of great chicken and you can make it yourself at home, so get these things ready for the smoker.

I've made a couple of very simple things, so first of all I bought them at Costco. I think they were nine dollars, so that's a lot of meat for nine dollars, so that's why a lot of people want to smoke. chicken because they want chicken but with flavor, which is actually very difficult to do, so all I did was trim around this entrance, trim around this entrance to the back of the chicken, so I cut a little piece of that guy. of the triangular piece of tailbone and now we're just going to season it and it couldn't be easier it's €50 50 salt and pepper and a lot of people ask me this and I'm always confused as to why they ask but they always ask if it's 50 50 by volume or by weight, it is 50 50 by volume because salt weighs much more than pepper and if you did 50 50 by weight you would have tons and tons and tons of pepper and not as much salt, so what we want is good color and good flavor in the outer skin, which we are going to leave crispy at the end.

We'll show you that whole process, but then I also want to get a little bit. seasoning on the inside so that the salt penetrates through the meat from the bottom, so it will be very simple, this is how I do it now. A word of caution 99 of the time when I cater events and cook chicken, I cook bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, the reason is because I think it's the best cut of chicken you can grill. I think you get phenomenal results and that will be the topic of a future video, but if you're cooking for your family. you might want a whole chicken just because it has a better presentation, you know, it has white meat and dark meat, it has a lot to offer and it's very cheap, so for this today we're going to make whole chickens, so it's a process similar. that you would use for a whole turkey, but there will be some twists that I think will really help you and make great chicken every time, so that's all I'm going to do to season these chickens and prepare them.

Go to the smoker now, if you want to be really particular, you can go in there, pick up the skin, try to scrape off the fat to get a crispy skin, but I'm going to show you a way that's a lot easier and a lot less messy. Get crispy skin on your chicken and I don't think it's going to be a barrier to chicken quality at all. I think it will actually make it better because some of that fat that's under the skin will baste on the meat underneath. and you'll have chicken that's moist and juicy and full of smoky flavors, you'll have tender chicken, juicy chicken, and flavorful chicken if you get those three things, that's always a winner if you make chicken right, so we're cooking these two chickens in the arms, but the same principle applies to any type of smoker you have, we're going to start at 225 degrees or if you have a pellet smoker I might suggest 200 degrees because at this point what we're looking for.

You're looking for flavor and a slow rise in temperature, so we want to do it slowly because we want to get as much flavor out of the chicken as possible because it doesn't have a long smoking time and so we have to take advantage of every opportunity. we have to add flavor, so at 225 degrees, I'm just going to put them in there like this, now you can tie a bunch of things with twine, all that, but the point of this video is easy smoked chicken at home, you can do it. a lot of hoops, you can jump through a lot of hoops to make sure you get everything exactly how you want it, but the point of making chicken is not because it's a fancy meal, it's because it's an easy meal that tastes good and is very cheap, so in that spirit we're going to make this as simple as possible, all we use is salt and pepper and I'm burning an oak log fire and if you have a pellet smoker you can use any type of pellets you want.

I want, as long as they are good quality, as long as they are made with real wood, what it says on the bag, you will be fine, if you use a smoking mountain, you will be fine, if we use even a cheap offset, the same apply principles we're going to do it exactly the same way so start at a low temperature in my case 225 although I normally cook at 275 but at 225 for the first hour or so and then we'll check the temperature and then we'll figure out what we have to do to finish it and there will be two stages of this cooking process so this is stage number one, adding flavour, stage two will be getting the skin crispy and bringing it to the final temperature that we need, so stage one is underway now same.

I'm going to close this. I'm going to check back in about 45 minutes, so it's been about two hours now and we have very, very good color on the chickens here, so that kind of deep golden color is from the smoke and we want to make sure that now that we have smoke, we have a crispy skin on the outside and we don't want to cook it for too long so that all the moisture escapes. Off the chicken, so we've been cooking at 225 the whole time, now it's time for stage two, we're going to cook at 3 25, so we're going to jump the temperature 100 degrees for two reasons, number one. to crisp up that number two skin, we're going to finish those breasts so they hang around 145, so we have to make sure they're finished and we're going to perform both tasks in one step of raising the temperature, I should point out that the beauty of this method is it is very very very simple just salt and pepper and I haven't basted it at all and guess what dark meat will still be juicy because there is more fat in dark meat and since we are not overcooking these breasts they will also be juicy, so when I prick the probe juice comes out and it looks phenomenal, I know it will be like that. really good, I know people I've talked to, a lot of people have told me that this is going to be the best chicken ever, it's going to be chicken like you've never seen before, so to turn up the heat, what does that mean? add more logs to the fire let it rise to about 3 25 and in maybe 15 minutes or so at 325 we should be done fine so it's been about 15 minutes and these things are done they might look a little brighter dark camera than they are, I guess, in person in real life, but to my eyes they look a perfect golden brown, amazing because that color doesn't come from being burned but from being smoked and that's exactly what I'm looking for , so check the internal temperature, the rest. 165 thanks to my handy dandy thermapen regular thermapen you say no say ah guess what a ir thermapen is so I think they're on sale right now for 104.95 so they're already discounted so I bought one anyway all that you have to do Press this button and it will tell you the temperature of whatever surface you're scanning, so for these, when I open this, the breasts were 165 and the skin was 217, which tells me, oh, very good fat obtained on the skin exactly what I'm looking for because when I press this the skin crunches and pops that's exactly what I want um normally I would say well actually wait I have gloves on so boom this is some delicious chicken I can't wait to to get it. on this and as you can see, it's still juicy, it's just dripping rendered fat, you see, that's not water, that's rendered fat, which is what makes things juicy.

I preach it in many videos, but with chicken it is extraordinarily difficult to do because many times you will cook the chicken without burning the fat properly. I assume you know that the only thing left to do at this point is try a slice. Now I could take it inside and try to set it all up nice and look good, but I'm going with that, so there are some things I'm good at, some things I'm not good at, that's one of the things I I'm no good, but I'm going to rip off my leg here, okay, don't say it.

Yo, that's not tender, don't tell me it's not juicy, I mean actually, even though it's ruining this, I'm just going to squeeze it and you'll see the juice coming out, that's juicy, but the real problem is the taste and now I have squeezed it. a little bit of your juice, I bet it's still wet because doing it this way keeps the moisture in, so here we go, let's try this still hot, oh man, does it smell good? It's perfect though, smoky, salt, pepper, juicy, tender, perfect like my dad used to make it. Say you can't beat that with a stick, so if you haven't tried it this way, do it in two stages of cooking, one at 225 and the next at 3 25, and you'll get a nice smoky flavor by the time it's at a low temperature and you'll get crispy skin when you cook it at 325 just to finish that's the way to do it I've tried it I don't know how many different ways to cook chicken and I've cooked it.

I don't know thousands of pounds of chicken for people and this is the way everyone agrees is the best. It's the way I think is the best and I think you should try it at home. Thank you all for watching Mad Scientist BBQ. If you enjoyed the video, hit the like button below, subscribe to the channel and also follow me on Instagram at Mad Scientist Barbecue. I'll see you next time.