My first smoke - "Basic Barbecued Chicken"


 
S

Scott Michaels

TVWBB Member
Today is my first smoke, and for time reasons, and overall simplicity for a newbee, I'm following the Basic Barbecued Chicken recipe from this site.

Everything is prepped, but I just want to make sure of one thing before I start lighting the grill. I realize that it says right off the bat, "...requires no attention to the cooker temperature...", but since this is a brand new WSM, I've heard they can run really hot. How hot (lid temp) is considered too hot for this recipe? I'm supposed to have all vents open 100%, so obviously I don't have to worry all too much, but I just want to be extra careful.

Thanks.
 
I too have a new wsm but I haven't done any chicken yet. I would think a good temp for chicken would be in the 325-350 range. That's based on my past experiences of smoking chicken on my chargriller. When I do my first chickens on the wsm I'm going for the high temps and empty water pan. Let us know what method you decide on and how it turns out.
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This is considered a high temp chicken cook; thus empty, foiled lined waterpan. you shouldn't really have to be concered with too high a temp, even with a new WSM. The higher heat of the new WSM will probably be a benefit in providing more crisp skin.

Best of luck with the new WSM and enjoy the cook and many more.

Paul
 
Scott, As others have said, don't worry about the temps here as this is definitely a high teemp recipe. Having said that, I have found that cooking chicken in the 350 to 375 ddegree range works best so you may want to try that range in the future.

Ray
 
I smoked 3 whole chickens this weekend (following the basic BBQ chicken approach). I fired up the cooker with two chimney fulls of coals (in hindsight it was a bit of overkill on the volume of coal) and shot the temp in the lid well over 400 (initially, off the dial of my thermo), empty pan, once the chickens went on the temp came down between 375-400 cooked there for about an hour and the chicken was simply amazing as moist as you could ever ask for.

Only thing was I got distracted by loading a cooler full of beer while crisping the skin on the first 3 halves and almost burned them..thought they were done for when the chicken was still aflame as I pulled it off the grate and sat in on the plate
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> thought they were done for when the chicken was still aflame as I pulled it off the grate and sat in on the plate </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
ROFLMAO - I have the best picture of this in my mind...
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You DID tell onlookers that that was a new recipe for flambe-ed chicken, didn't you?
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Keri C
 
I cooked 1 split chicken Saturday and followed directions except for one thing. When I dumped the unlit coals on the lit ones I didn't wait long enough for them to burn and put the chicken on. We had briquette flavored chicken.
The breast showed 180. The breasts were moist and well done but the thighs were not fall off the bone done.
 
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