How to smoke a spatchcock chicken.

When you go to the butcher or grocery story you pay for convenience. I have never taken a whole chicken and spatchcocked it - which is taking the spine off which allows you to lay the chicken flat for grilling or smoking. This method cooks the chicken evenly and produces a wonderful end result that looks great. 

Buying a spatchcock chicken is easy and not really that much more expensive - but I do like to make the use of what a whole chicken gives you. When I cut the spine out - using kitchen shears or even a serrated bread knife - I get those bones to save for a future stock. I also like chicken hearts/livers pan seared with butter and a bit of salt. You also get the neck to save for stock. I try to like the gizzards but no matter what they are tough and chewy - there is a KFC in Hannibal Missouri that deep fries them and when I am in that area I get an order to go. 

Laying the whole chicken on my cutting board breast side down I cut down each side of the spine and turn the bird over and season it in a lasagna pan to rest a bit - as it is still chilly from taking out of the fridge. 

I would say that the seasoning is not really important as the skin on a smoker is kinda soft and rubbery - what I am going for is flavor from smoke into the chicken. You CAN smoke the chicken first and turn up the heat and try to crisp up the skin of which I did try but most of it was not crispy this cook. I remove the skin and season the chicken on my plate more with what I like to use...and that is your option as well with having beautiful smoke chicken and season it before you eat it. 

I use the Pit Barrel Cooker to smoke my chicken. Check out the link HERE. If you have a grill and want to learn a simple basic way of smoking ribs, chicken, pork butt, loins, wings and more then check out a Pit Barrel Cooker as it is amazing for making great food. You can hang food or use the grate for smoking - for this cook, I used the grate.

You can see more of the cook here on my Facebook page Embrace The Flame BBQ. 

I let it cook for an hour and check the pit to see how its doing - then at one hour and half and took a temp with an instant read and it needed more time. You want chicken to be 165 temp and once I got that temp and it read 190 in thigh (and that is ok) so I turned the chicken skin side down to crisp it up a bit...and it did a bit but not enough, so next time I can go a bit longer. 

If you want - you can apply your favorite bbq sauce to let it set a bit on the chicken. I did not do this as all we wanted was pure smoke chicken without any seasoning or sauce on it. 

You raise the temp of a PBC by cracking the lid open and this allows more air to come in stoking the coals to increase the temp. You can smoke wings this way and crisp up the skin by opening up the lid. There are also rebars that are used to hang meat (check out my blogs that involve ribs) and if you remove those bars it allows more air to come in that will raise the temp. 

Controlling your air flow is part of Attentive Smoking that I am still learning about with each cook. Its all intuitive and you learn with each cook to gain experience and what I learned with this cook is to let the skin crisp up longer. 

The chicken looks great - had the right temp check, and it was super moist - but when I went to eat it I realized it could have went a bit longer for skin crisp and the chicken closest to the bone could have went a bit longer but it was nice as it was. 

Add some veggies that my wife made - throw in my twin boys home from college and the food did not last long. 

Breast meet was super moist - most we ever had as I am not a chicken breast guy and it was really good. Thigh and leg meat is my preference and it was really good but as mentioned it could have cooked just a bit more. Juice was clear, temp was right but there was a bite to the thigh that told my intuitive cook that it could use a bit more cooking. 

Embrace The Flame BBQ is all about learning and sharing lessons with each backyard bbq cook to help you expand your cooking skills and try new foods.

Telling you everything came out perfect would have been easy as the photos look great - but the small detail that my food snob palette and overall honesty has to reveal the small detail of it being edible but needed more cook for the skin to crisp and for the meat to be done on the thighs more. 

Cooking is suggestive and it depends on what you and your family likes to eat. 

The point of this blog is not to really depend on gadgets for reading temperature but more so by the feel of the chicken when you handle it with gloves or tongs, how the skin pulls away from the bone/meat, how clear the juice runs by learning to trust your Inner Grill Mentor....and that takes time, experience and learning by frustration and mistakes. 

Learning to spatchcock your own chicken, use a simple smoker instead of your usual grill and putting a smile on everyone’s face with food you made will create new memories and that is what cooking for your friends and family is all about. 

 Have a great cook and Embrace The Flame not only on your smoker/grill but more so in living out your dreams.