The Art of Smoking Chicken: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Perfectly Tasty BBQ

Smoking chicken is a hands-off process, but that doesn't mean it can't be made more interesting by experimenting with different techniques and recipes. In this guide, we'll take you through the steps involved in smoking chicken on a gas grill, from preparing the meat to creating a delicious spicy SLO.

Preparing the Meat: The Importance of Patience

When it comes to smoking chicken, patience is key. A good rule of thumb is to smoke the chicken for about an hour and a half, giving you plenty of time to prepare the meat and set up your grill. To ensure that your chicken is cooked to perfection, make sure to start monitoring its temperature from the inside out. This involves poking holes in the breast and thigh with a fork or knife to check on the internal temperature. For optimal results, aim for an internal temperature of 130°F (54°C) in the thickest part of the breast and 140°F (60°C) in the dark meat.

Setting Up the Grill: A Matter of Temperature Control

Smoking is a hands-off process, but that doesn't mean it can't be made more interesting by experimenting with different temperatures. When it comes to setting up your grill for smoking chicken, the temperature control is crucial. Aim for a consistent temperature between 225°F (110°C) and 250°F (120°C), depending on your personal preference. If you're new to smoking, it's best to start with a lower temperature and gradually increase it as needed.

Creating Spicy SLO: A Delicious Side Dish

Spicy SLO is the perfect side dish for BBQ chicken, and it's surprisingly easy to make. To get started, simply remove the core from one head of green cabbage and shred it to your liking. For a chunkier texture, you can leave the cabbage in larger pieces, while for a crisper texture, you can shred it finer. Once you have your shredded cabbage, add it to a bowl with some salted ice water, whisking thoroughly to dissolve the salt. Let the cabbage hang out in the fridge for 1-4 hours, which will season the cabbage and make it extra crisp.

The Magic of Homemade Mayo

Homemade mayo is the key to creating a delicious SLO dressing. To make it, simply combine a half-clove of garlic, a whole egg, juice of half a lemon, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, and a pinch of kosher salt in a slender container. Blend the mixture with an immersion blender until smooth, then slowly stream in one cup of neutral oil while pulsing the blender at full speed. The result is a creamy, tangy mayo that's perfect for dressing your SLO.

Brining and Dressing: Adding Flavor to Your SLO

To add extra flavor to your SLO, try brining it heavily before mixing it with the Mayo-based dressing. Simply combine shredded cabbage, Mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, Cajun seasoning, black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil in a bowl. Mix everything together until homogeneous, then taste for seasoning and adjust as needed. If you want to add some extra kick to your SLO, feel free to experiment with different spices or ingredients.

Grilling and Crisping: The Final Touches

The final step in creating delicious BBQ chicken is grilling and crisping the skin. Once your chicken has reached its target temperatures, it's time to start painting and crisping the skin. This involves coating the chicken with barbecue sauce and cranking up the heat directly under the chicken. After about 5 minutes, you should start to see and hear charring and sizzling taking place.

Flipping and Finishing: The Final Touches

To get that perfect crispy skin, you'll need to flip your chicken over and char the other side as well. Flip everything over and close the grill down for another 3-5 minutes until the skin starts to pick up some nice dark color. Paint the bottoms and flip things back over one more time giving your pieces one last coat of paint and shutting things down to finish cooking.

Final Results: Delicious BBQ Chicken with Spicy SLO

And there you have it – delicious BBQ chicken smothered in a tangy, spicy SLO made from scratch. Whether you're an experienced grill master or just starting out, this recipe is sure to impress your friends and family. Remember, the key to smoking chicken is patience and attention to detail, but with these tips and techniques under your belt, you'll be on your way to creating perfectly tasty BBQ in no time.

Butcher Box Sponsorship: Supporting Your Local Farmers

The BBQ chicken recipe we've shared today was made possible by the generous sponsorship of Butcher Box. As a leading provider of high-quality meat and seafood, Butcher Box makes it easy to stock your freezer with everything you need for delicious barbecuing and meal planning. With their subscription service, you can choose from a variety of box types and receive regular deliveries of fresh, locally-sourced ingredients. By supporting local farmers and producers, you're helping to promote sustainable agriculture and reduce food waste.

Conclusion

Smoking chicken is an art form that requires patience, attention to detail, and a willingness to experiment with new techniques and recipes. With this guide, we hope to have inspired you to try something new and delicious in the world of BBQ. Whether you're a seasoned grill master or just starting out, remember that practice makes perfect, so don't be afraid to get creative and adjust your recipe as needed. Happy smoking!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis episode is sponsored by butcher box with butcher box you can get highquality meat and seafood delivered directly to your door choose from 100% grass-fed and finished beef free range organic chicken wild CA seafood and pork raised grap free sourced from Farmers and fishermen dedicated to doing the right thing for limited time new members receive four 6 oun grass-fed and grass finished top seran steaks free in every box for an entire year if you want this deal use my link in the description all right first basics in a long long time and this one's basic indeed a barbecue chicken with no recipe you can use any chicken parts that you like but make sure that they're bone in and skin on if you got a whole bird you can break it down into its core components using little more than a pair of kitchen shears first snipping out the spine and cracking things open cutting EAS between the breast and the thigh where there's virtually no bone or connective tissue trying to leave more skin on the breast than on the thigh then to separate the breasts replacing a shallow snip at the base of the breastplate cracking it open and pulling out the dark red Keel bone making it much easier to Simply cut directly between the breasts separating the two halves of the bird then you can leave the wings attached to the breasts for airline style or just like when you separate the thighs and the drums you follow a thin strip of fat that runs around the joint and place exploratory Cuts until you can fit the scissors between the bones once the chicken's chopped up it's time to rub it down with spices to eyeball a barbecue dry rub we start with mostly chili powder let's say about a third of a cup of the stuff chili powder and sweet paprika are very neutral rounded familiar barbecue flavors so they make up most of the Dust then if you're not using a smoker I like to add a teaspoon of smoked paprika for you know smoke and about a/ teaspoon or all that I have left of cayenne pepper for a little bit of heat then a/ teaspoon of cumin brings some floral funky notes a/ teaspoon of oregano for Grassy herbaceousness and about a teaspoon each garlic powder and onion powder both of which obviously bring essential foundational flavor then I like to add about a/ teaspoon of crushed dried rosemary normally I'm not a fan but in barbecue spice rubs they bring a really familiar comforting flavor and then damn near as much brown sugar as there are spices dry rubs and barbecue sauce are both laid in with sugar these sugars caramelize on the grill and balance out all the tang and spice so it's pretty hard to overdo it a few twists of freshly ground black pepper and a few generous pinches of kosher salt make sure you taste your spice rub you want it to taste almost equal parts sweet spicy and salty once you got the flavors where you like them it's time to spread your dust evenly across every facet of your chicken top bottom and sides rubbing it into and Under the Skin wherever possible cover this guy up with plastic wrap and let him sit in the fridge for at least a couple hours ideally overnight in the meantime we can focus on our sauce barbecue sauce is also pretty easy to eyeball it's usually around 60% ketchup maybe 20% yellow mustard and the rest is just flavors and sweeteners a few dashes of hot sauce any leftover barbecue rub pinch of garlic powder pinch of onion powder a generous Dash dash of Rochester sauce fresh ground pepper pinch of kosher salt and a big old glug of the sweetener of your choice molasses Honey brown sugar maple syrup and then you can taste it for flavor and adjust just like the dry rub it should be sweet Tangy salty and spicy bring this guy up to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes before putting to good use now we're headed out to the grill where my grill grates really need to be seasoned so I'm maxing out my burners and getting this whole thing ripping hot for about 15 minutes before giving the grates a thorough scraping with a wire brush then turning off the heat and generously lubing the grates with a neutral flavored oil like vegetable or Canola crank the heat back onto Max and let the oil cure on the grates for about 10 minutes now by definition barbecue is not barbecue without smoke and the best way to do that on a gas grill is to make a smoke packet placing wood chips or smoker pellets on a sheet of aluminum foil wrapping them up tight into a wide flat packet and poking some holes in the top for smoke to escape all of our pieces are in place so now it's time to grab our chicken as you can see our dry rub has formed a beautiful layer on the outside of the chicken which is not only going to taste awesome it's also going to get sticky and crunchy when we sear things off towards the end now we want to try to maintain a constant temperature but the temperature gauges built into grills are notoriously unreliable you can usually count on the temperature at the grates being about 100° fit hotter than whatever the gauge says since I want to smoke my chicken around 225 325 is Right Where I want to live on the gauge to achieve that temperature I've got all the burners on the left side of the grill turned off only the far right burner is turned on so the chicken is all going on the cool side of the grill the dark meat is closer to the heat Source because it's less prown to overcooking then I'm lifting up the grates over the active burner and placing our wood ship packet directly onto the heat shield over the burner depending on how hot your grill runs you might just be able to put it right on top of the grates but mine's pretty weak so the packet needs that more direct heat exposure so all the Heat and smoke are being generated on this side of the grill and creating a gentle ambient cooking environment for the chicken on this side of the grill so now comes the hard part shutting this guy down trying to maintain that temperature and resisting the urge to Peak if you find that the temperature is getting too low crank up the burner on the right side and vice versa things are getting too hot from this point on there's only two reasons we open this Grill one to occasionally spray down the chicken with apple juice not only is this going to create a nice moist cooking environment and add a nice flavor but moisture helps meat absorb smoke so especially given that this is hackard barbecue we want to maximize as much smoke flavor as we can the other reason is to replace the smoke packet every 30 to 45 minutes once you stop seeing and smelling the good stuff wafting up from inside the chicken usually smokes for about an hour and a half so making three packets ahead of time is a safe bet once the chicken is starting to look dry and tight and take on some color I'm going to start temping it shuffling the pieces around and putting them closer to the heat Source if they're not coming up to Temp fast enough I'm looking for 130 Fahrenheit in the thickest part of the breast 140 in the dark meat smoking is a pretty hands-off process so it's a good time to make some spicy SLO I'm starting by having and removing the core from one head of green cabbage and then shredding it to your mouth preferences I like a kind of chunkier SLO and then for a less runny extra crispy SLO I like to brine the Cabbage heavily salting a big bowl of ice water whisking thoroughly to make sure that all the salt is dissolved adding the cabbage and letting it hang out in the fridge for 1 to 4 hours this both seasons the cabbage and makes it extra crisp then for the dressing the only way to go is homemade Mayo in a slender container the same width as the head of your immersion blender we're combining a half clove of garlic a whole egg juice of half a lemon no lemon seeds that's that's illegal a/ teaspoon of Dijon mustard and a generous pinch of koser salt Blitz this a few times with your immersion blender until it is smooth and then keeping the blender head in the container we're slowly streaming one cup of neutral oil like canola or vegetable down the side of the cup so that it settles on top of the egg then starting from the bottom and pulsing our way up we're blasting the immersion blender on Full Speed very quickly forming a smooth creamy Mayo it's way better than anything you're ever going to get out of a jar and it comes together in about 5 minutes now to make the SLO we're rinsing and then thoroughly toweling off our cabbage and making a dressing from our homemade Mayo little splash tablespoon or two of white wine vinegar then I want this to be a spicy SLO so I'm going to add a generous sprinkling of Cajun season seon in roughly a tablespoon of white sugar a few generous twists of freshly ground black pepper and a healthy drizzle of extra virgin olive oil whisk until homogeneous taste for seasoning and then it's time to add the fegge we got our whole head of shredded cabbage three stocks of celery thinly sliced 1/4 Red Onion thinly sliced and three Sano chilies thinly sliced mix it up until it's all evenly dressed taste for seasoning and fridge until ready to eat back outside on the grill it's time to start painting and crisping the chicken has reached its various Target temperatures so I'm coating it with barbecue sauce and cranking piing up the heat directly under the chicken after about 5 minutes you should start to see and hear charring and sizzling taking place once the Bottom's picked up some nice color it's time to flip things over and Char the skin you're going to lose a little bit of your gooey barbecue coating at this point but don't worry there's plenty of opportunities to paint it back on flip everybody over and close the grill down for another 3 to 5 minutes until the skin starts to pick up some really nice dark color paint the bottoms and flip things back over one more time giving our pieces one last coat of paint and shutting things down to finish cooking at this point if the chicken isn't Done Yet crank down the heat and let it finish coming up to 10 we're looking for breast to register 155 fit and dark meat to register 175 plate up with extra sauce and a big pile of spicy Cajun SLO and there you have it barbecu chicken on a gas grill no recipe involved just tasting and testing as you go and it is every bit as fantastic as it looks now if you prefer to follow more specific directions or if you're just starting out we are going to have a written recipe on the website but barbecue chicken is a great opportunity to experiment and try things out as you go there are plenty of moments when you can correct or augment and even if things go terribly wrong it's still going to be pretty good but when they go right it's really really good thank you again to butcher box for sponsoring this episode with butcher box you can stock your freezer with high quality meat and seafood making barbecuing and meal planning easier you choose your box type and frequency and they'll always ship your order for free in an eco-friendly box for limited time new members receive 4 6 oun grass fed and grass finish top sirloin Stakes free in every box for an entire year if you want this deal use my link in the description descriptionthis episode is sponsored by butcher box with butcher box you can get highquality meat and seafood delivered directly to your door choose from 100% grass-fed and finished beef free range organic chicken wild CA seafood and pork raised grap free sourced from Farmers and fishermen dedicated to doing the right thing for limited time new members receive four 6 oun grass-fed and grass finished top seran steaks free in every box for an entire year if you want this deal use my link in the description all right first basics in a long long time and this one's basic indeed a barbecue chicken with no recipe you can use any chicken parts that you like but make sure that they're bone in and skin on if you got a whole bird you can break it down into its core components using little more than a pair of kitchen shears first snipping out the spine and cracking things open cutting EAS between the breast and the thigh where there's virtually no bone or connective tissue trying to leave more skin on the breast than on the thigh then to separate the breasts replacing a shallow snip at the base of the breastplate cracking it open and pulling out the dark red Keel bone making it much easier to Simply cut directly between the breasts separating the two halves of the bird then you can leave the wings attached to the breasts for airline style or just like when you separate the thighs and the drums you follow a thin strip of fat that runs around the joint and place exploratory Cuts until you can fit the scissors between the bones once the chicken's chopped up it's time to rub it down with spices to eyeball a barbecue dry rub we start with mostly chili powder let's say about a third of a cup of the stuff chili powder and sweet paprika are very neutral rounded familiar barbecue flavors so they make up most of the Dust then if you're not using a smoker I like to add a teaspoon of smoked paprika for you know smoke and about a/ teaspoon or all that I have left of cayenne pepper for a little bit of heat then a/ teaspoon of cumin brings some floral funky notes a/ teaspoon of oregano for Grassy herbaceousness and about a teaspoon each garlic powder and onion powder both of which obviously bring essential foundational flavor then I like to add about a/ teaspoon of crushed dried rosemary normally I'm not a fan but in barbecue spice rubs they bring a really familiar comforting flavor and then damn near as much brown sugar as there are spices dry rubs and barbecue sauce are both laid in with sugar these sugars caramelize on the grill and balance out all the tang and spice so it's pretty hard to overdo it a few twists of freshly ground black pepper and a few generous pinches of kosher salt make sure you taste your spice rub you want it to taste almost equal parts sweet spicy and salty once you got the flavors where you like them it's time to spread your dust evenly across every facet of your chicken top bottom and sides rubbing it into and Under the Skin wherever possible cover this guy up with plastic wrap and let him sit in the fridge for at least a couple hours ideally overnight in the meantime we can focus on our sauce barbecue sauce is also pretty easy to eyeball it's usually around 60% ketchup maybe 20% yellow mustard and the rest is just flavors and sweeteners a few dashes of hot sauce any leftover barbecue rub pinch of garlic powder pinch of onion powder a generous Dash dash of Rochester sauce fresh ground pepper pinch of kosher salt and a big old glug of the sweetener of your choice molasses Honey brown sugar maple syrup and then you can taste it for flavor and adjust just like the dry rub it should be sweet Tangy salty and spicy bring this guy up to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes before putting to good use now we're headed out to the grill where my grill grates really need to be seasoned so I'm maxing out my burners and getting this whole thing ripping hot for about 15 minutes before giving the grates a thorough scraping with a wire brush then turning off the heat and generously lubing the grates with a neutral flavored oil like vegetable or Canola crank the heat back onto Max and let the oil cure on the grates for about 10 minutes now by definition barbecue is not barbecue without smoke and the best way to do that on a gas grill is to make a smoke packet placing wood chips or smoker pellets on a sheet of aluminum foil wrapping them up tight into a wide flat packet and poking some holes in the top for smoke to escape all of our pieces are in place so now it's time to grab our chicken as you can see our dry rub has formed a beautiful layer on the outside of the chicken which is not only going to taste awesome it's also going to get sticky and crunchy when we sear things off towards the end now we want to try to maintain a constant temperature but the temperature gauges built into grills are notoriously unreliable you can usually count on the temperature at the grates being about 100° fit hotter than whatever the gauge says since I want to smoke my chicken around 225 325 is Right Where I want to live on the gauge to achieve that temperature I've got all the burners on the left side of the grill turned off only the far right burner is turned on so the chicken is all going on the cool side of the grill the dark meat is closer to the heat Source because it's less prown to overcooking then I'm lifting up the grates over the active burner and placing our wood ship packet directly onto the heat shield over the burner depending on how hot your grill runs you might just be able to put it right on top of the grates but mine's pretty weak so the packet needs that more direct heat exposure so all the Heat and smoke are being generated on this side of the grill and creating a gentle ambient cooking environment for the chicken on this side of the grill so now comes the hard part shutting this guy down trying to maintain that temperature and resisting the urge to Peak if you find that the temperature is getting too low crank up the burner on the right side and vice versa things are getting too hot from this point on there's only two reasons we open this Grill one to occasionally spray down the chicken with apple juice not only is this going to create a nice moist cooking environment and add a nice flavor but moisture helps meat absorb smoke so especially given that this is hackard barbecue we want to maximize as much smoke flavor as we can the other reason is to replace the smoke packet every 30 to 45 minutes once you stop seeing and smelling the good stuff wafting up from inside the chicken usually smokes for about an hour and a half so making three packets ahead of time is a safe bet once the chicken is starting to look dry and tight and take on some color I'm going to start temping it shuffling the pieces around and putting them closer to the heat Source if they're not coming up to Temp fast enough I'm looking for 130 Fahrenheit in the thickest part of the breast 140 in the dark meat smoking is a pretty hands-off process so it's a good time to make some spicy SLO I'm starting by having and removing the core from one head of green cabbage and then shredding it to your mouth preferences I like a kind of chunkier SLO and then for a less runny extra crispy SLO I like to brine the Cabbage heavily salting a big bowl of ice water whisking thoroughly to make sure that all the salt is dissolved adding the cabbage and letting it hang out in the fridge for 1 to 4 hours this both seasons the cabbage and makes it extra crisp then for the dressing the only way to go is homemade Mayo in a slender container the same width as the head of your immersion blender we're combining a half clove of garlic a whole egg juice of half a lemon no lemon seeds that's that's illegal a/ teaspoon of Dijon mustard and a generous pinch of koser salt Blitz this a few times with your immersion blender until it is smooth and then keeping the blender head in the container we're slowly streaming one cup of neutral oil like canola or vegetable down the side of the cup so that it settles on top of the egg then starting from the bottom and pulsing our way up we're blasting the immersion blender on Full Speed very quickly forming a smooth creamy Mayo it's way better than anything you're ever going to get out of a jar and it comes together in about 5 minutes now to make the SLO we're rinsing and then thoroughly toweling off our cabbage and making a dressing from our homemade Mayo little splash tablespoon or two of white wine vinegar then I want this to be a spicy SLO so I'm going to add a generous sprinkling of Cajun season seon in roughly a tablespoon of white sugar a few generous twists of freshly ground black pepper and a healthy drizzle of extra virgin olive oil whisk until homogeneous taste for seasoning and then it's time to add the fegge we got our whole head of shredded cabbage three stocks of celery thinly sliced 1/4 Red Onion thinly sliced and three Sano chilies thinly sliced mix it up until it's all evenly dressed taste for seasoning and fridge until ready to eat back outside on the grill it's time to start painting and crisping the chicken has reached its various Target temperatures so I'm coating it with barbecue sauce and cranking piing up the heat directly under the chicken after about 5 minutes you should start to see and hear charring and sizzling taking place once the Bottom's picked up some nice color it's time to flip things over and Char the skin you're going to lose a little bit of your gooey barbecue coating at this point but don't worry there's plenty of opportunities to paint it back on flip everybody over and close the grill down for another 3 to 5 minutes until the skin starts to pick up some really nice dark color paint the bottoms and flip things back over one more time giving our pieces one last coat of paint and shutting things down to finish cooking at this point if the chicken isn't Done Yet crank down the heat and let it finish coming up to 10 we're looking for breast to register 155 fit and dark meat to register 175 plate up with extra sauce and a big pile of spicy Cajun SLO and there you have it barbecu chicken on a gas grill no recipe involved just tasting and testing as you go and it is every bit as fantastic as it looks now if you prefer to follow more specific directions or if you're just starting out we are going to have a written recipe on the website but barbecue chicken is a great opportunity to experiment and try things out as you go there are plenty of moments when you can correct or augment and even if things go terribly wrong it's still going to be pretty good but when they go right it's really really good thank you again to butcher box for sponsoring this episode with butcher box you can stock your freezer with high quality meat and seafood making barbecuing and meal planning easier you choose your box type and frequency and they'll always ship your order for free in an eco-friendly box for limited time new members receive 4 6 oun grass fed and grass finish top sirloin Stakes free in every box for an entire year if you want this deal use my link in the description description\n"