I just wanted to report in on a very successful smoke I did this weekend. Normally around here, chickens are something simple that go from the fridge to the grill to the plate in a high-speed fashion. Nothing fancy.
For a trial on my WSM, I thought I'd do something a little better. Friday evening I mixed up a batch of the Apple Brine listed in the Cooking Topics section. Instead of doing a whole turkey, I butterflied two chickens and soaked them in the brine overnight. I didn't do the step of drying them in the fridge, because we normally pull the skin off the chicken when it's done anyhow.
I fired up the WSM Saturday afternoon with some apple and cherry wood in there, and situated the two birds on the top rack. I was cooking up some spaghetti sauce inside (unrelated... just doing a big cooking day) so I tossed a couple heads of garlic and a yellow onion on to smoke with the chickens too. Good god, the back yard smelled like heaven!
Long story short, all kind of BBQ joints around here have smoked turkey, and one home cooking place I know serves smoked chicken. The birds I smoked Saturday blow the socks off of all of 'em. The flavor was dynamite, smoky and sweet. The meat was so tender and juicy, but it still had a nice firmness to it. You could slice the breast and it actually made a slice... those Boston Market rotissery chickens all go to mush in my opinion. The wife usually says nice things about my cooking, but she even mentioned it again the next day. Now that means I did a good job.
Anyhow, just wanted to say thank you to the website and to everyone on the forum. I see lots of recipes I'm anxious to try. I also need to take some pictures while I'm working. I really love seeing you guys do that. It makes it a lot easier if I'm trying a new recipe, working with an unfamiliar cut of meat, or whatever so I can picture what I'm supposed to be doing. Also makes me dang hungry looking at some of the pictures, and I want to go try them out for myself. Thanks again -- hopefully I'll have some photographic evidence from my next project!
For a trial on my WSM, I thought I'd do something a little better. Friday evening I mixed up a batch of the Apple Brine listed in the Cooking Topics section. Instead of doing a whole turkey, I butterflied two chickens and soaked them in the brine overnight. I didn't do the step of drying them in the fridge, because we normally pull the skin off the chicken when it's done anyhow.
I fired up the WSM Saturday afternoon with some apple and cherry wood in there, and situated the two birds on the top rack. I was cooking up some spaghetti sauce inside (unrelated... just doing a big cooking day) so I tossed a couple heads of garlic and a yellow onion on to smoke with the chickens too. Good god, the back yard smelled like heaven!
Long story short, all kind of BBQ joints around here have smoked turkey, and one home cooking place I know serves smoked chicken. The birds I smoked Saturday blow the socks off of all of 'em. The flavor was dynamite, smoky and sweet. The meat was so tender and juicy, but it still had a nice firmness to it. You could slice the breast and it actually made a slice... those Boston Market rotissery chickens all go to mush in my opinion. The wife usually says nice things about my cooking, but she even mentioned it again the next day. Now that means I did a good job.
Anyhow, just wanted to say thank you to the website and to everyone on the forum. I see lots of recipes I'm anxious to try. I also need to take some pictures while I'm working. I really love seeing you guys do that. It makes it a lot easier if I'm trying a new recipe, working with an unfamiliar cut of meat, or whatever so I can picture what I'm supposed to be doing. Also makes me dang hungry looking at some of the pictures, and I want to go try them out for myself. Thanks again -- hopefully I'll have some photographic evidence from my next project!
