Dave Russell
TVWBB Honor Circle
Been a while since I did some 'Bama White Sauce chicken, so that was what we had for a late dinner midday. Here's what I noted, in case anyone might be interested:
SASSAFRASS SMOKE is much better on simple smoked chicken with typical KC-style bbq rubs, like unglazed leg quarters. (To my tastes, PECAN has been best for White Sauce chicken. It's also tasty for turkey breast w/ white sauce, like Dr. BBQ's recipe in his first book.)
For a FOUR FRYER "HH" cook, my plan really worked well, in terms of evenness of cooking and predictable results. Instead of four split birds divided between the two grates, this is what I did: I simply foiled the pan, and put the largest bird, butterflied on the bottom grate. On my extra grate, which sits on the heads of three carriage bolts bolted to my bottom grate, I had the next largest butterflied bird. On the top grate, I layed the two smallest ones. These I split, and had the halves in a circle, legs disjointed and pushed up on the breast, thighs pointed out, (per Gary Wiviott's instructions in "Low and Slow".) All the chicken was done roughly about the same time, although I should mention that I swapped the two lower birds rack positions when I oiled, flipped, and peppered all of them. (If I would've had time to cook a little slower, I might've just split all four and divided between the two grates, although the extra grate is really no trouble.)
MY 18.5" WSM is just STUBBORN when it comes to HH cooks. This might be because I always seem to fill it up, like cooking four chickens at once. Anyhow, I've simply resigned myself to the fact that UNLESS I surround the cooker with a drum, even with the DOOR CRACKED and a ring FULL of mostly lit LUMP, 300* is about all I'm gonna get, at least for a good while til all the meat heats up. On this cook, the vent temp quickly reached and maintained about 275* for a while, but had climbed to 300* when I took the grates out and flipped all the birds. With that big shot of air to the coals, the temp finally topped 325*.
Everyone seemed to like the chicken, and it wasn't done TOO early
...but regarding times/temps on White Sauce chicken, ignore Chris Lilly's in his book, "Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book". For his family's famous butterflied chicken recipe, he says to cook 3 hr @ 325*! I'm bad about remembering chicken cook times/temps, but I knew THAT wasn't right!
If any of you guys cook chicken on the wsm in the 275-300* range, I'd be glad to hear how much time ya'll usually allow for a split chicken cook. I'd say mine were all done in about 1.75 hr or so, but I really can't say what the average temp was since it was basically climbing for most of the cook.
Happy July 4th, everybody!!!
SASSAFRASS SMOKE is much better on simple smoked chicken with typical KC-style bbq rubs, like unglazed leg quarters. (To my tastes, PECAN has been best for White Sauce chicken. It's also tasty for turkey breast w/ white sauce, like Dr. BBQ's recipe in his first book.)
For a FOUR FRYER "HH" cook, my plan really worked well, in terms of evenness of cooking and predictable results. Instead of four split birds divided between the two grates, this is what I did: I simply foiled the pan, and put the largest bird, butterflied on the bottom grate. On my extra grate, which sits on the heads of three carriage bolts bolted to my bottom grate, I had the next largest butterflied bird. On the top grate, I layed the two smallest ones. These I split, and had the halves in a circle, legs disjointed and pushed up on the breast, thighs pointed out, (per Gary Wiviott's instructions in "Low and Slow".) All the chicken was done roughly about the same time, although I should mention that I swapped the two lower birds rack positions when I oiled, flipped, and peppered all of them. (If I would've had time to cook a little slower, I might've just split all four and divided between the two grates, although the extra grate is really no trouble.)
MY 18.5" WSM is just STUBBORN when it comes to HH cooks. This might be because I always seem to fill it up, like cooking four chickens at once. Anyhow, I've simply resigned myself to the fact that UNLESS I surround the cooker with a drum, even with the DOOR CRACKED and a ring FULL of mostly lit LUMP, 300* is about all I'm gonna get, at least for a good while til all the meat heats up. On this cook, the vent temp quickly reached and maintained about 275* for a while, but had climbed to 300* when I took the grates out and flipped all the birds. With that big shot of air to the coals, the temp finally topped 325*.
Everyone seemed to like the chicken, and it wasn't done TOO early
...but regarding times/temps on White Sauce chicken, ignore Chris Lilly's in his book, "Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book". For his family's famous butterflied chicken recipe, he says to cook 3 hr @ 325*! I'm bad about remembering chicken cook times/temps, but I knew THAT wasn't right!
If any of you guys cook chicken on the wsm in the 275-300* range, I'd be glad to hear how much time ya'll usually allow for a split chicken cook. I'd say mine were all done in about 1.75 hr or so, but I really can't say what the average temp was since it was basically climbing for most of the cook.
Happy July 4th, everybody!!!