Barbecue Chicken Sandwich

everybody I'm chef Tom with a tbq calm and this is the BBQ chicken sandwich what today we're gonna be smoking up a couple of whole chickens spatchcock style on the yoader smokers loaded Wichita offset smoker and not just any offset smoker but the first ever Yoder smokers manufactured this is serial number one which is always exciting to cook on now after we get these birds smoked up we're gonna pull all the meat you can create a really delicious barbecue chicken sandwich super simple super tasty but before we can get to that we got to light the fire so let's get to burnin some sticks all right well we're gonna start by loading up a charcoal chimney get a couple starter cubes down here our chimney down right on top of there load it up with comodo Joe big block charcoal all the way full and we'll just wait until our embers are nice and hot now we've got the charcoal it's almost white to the top it's ready to dump out now when it comes to running a fire on Austin I like to run a small hot fire toward the back of the firebox so we're just gonna kind of move all our coals to the back half I'm gonna add a few more good sized chunks of our big block just to slowly burn down while this comes up to temp we'll go ahead and throw a log of pecan wood on there and then toward the front half of this firebox I'm gonna keep a log here at all times to warm up we'll keep one right on top to warm up as well the reason we want to warm up our sticks of wood before we throw them on the fire is so that they're already hot when they hit the coals and they can ignite instantly that makes sure that we don't have any of that blue smoke chugging through the smoker we get clean white smoke all the time now when you're cooking on a pellet grill you always have that clean smoke it's pellet hits the fire instantly combust air is always moving you got to take a little more care when you're doing something on a stick burner like this so anytime we can take a step to make the smoke cleaner and the impact product better we're gonna do that and initially I like to just leave the door open a little bit so that that fire gets some good oxygen to kick everything off we'll shut that down as soon as the thing comes up to temp today I want to smoke these birds at about 275 to 300 degrees and we've come up to that temperature now so I'm going to close up the firebox and start to adjust our airflow so that we can stabilize it right where we want it all right now let's get into prepping up those birds so we got a couple of whole birds here about four and a half pounds each and to prepare these spatchcock style if you haven't seen this before what we're doing is we're just coming in cutting down right along the side of the backbone now a lot of you guys are familiar with this already and I really feel like this is my favorite way to cook a whole bird so if you haven't tried it yet it's definitely worth it how I like to cook my turkeys as well so just keeping right along the side of that backbone there fully remove that backbone and this backbone is great for making chicken stock with so you can hang on to those and save them up now I'm going to do a little bit of cleaning up on the back but you can do as little or as much as you want really I'm gonna go ahead and get rid of these bones that I cut through we don't need those poking out we come down here to this end you've kind of got all this flappy stuff if you want to cut out some of the ribs you can do that again this is kind of all optional but we're gonna get rid of this stuff in the end anyway so it doesn't hurt to get rid of it now and when you're spatchcocking birds there's kind of two ways you can end up with the quarters here attach this so this is fully on attack or fully detached from the carcass I should say this sides still hanging on by a bone that runs right down here next to the backbone and if you want to leave it there you can but if you want to cut it out now to make things easier later you can do that as well you're just going to cut right along the side of it and you're going right along the side of that ball joint as well so really not losing any meat there so that looks pretty good we've opened those thighs up so that we can kind of get in there and season all of the surfaces and the meat there which is great one of the reasons I like to clean it up come into the other side what we want to do is release the skin from the flesh so we can get some seasoning underneath there as well for the thighs it's really easy you're just gonna push out like this now you've exposed the thigh meat and the leg meat once I've done that I like to take both these legs and lift them up toward the top of the breasts and start to pull that breast skin back so I won't go all the way but almost to the top and then we'll come at it from the other side you got a bunch of fat in here that can come out cut it out or pull it out by hand and again we're just right in here releasing that skin from the breast and now you can get some seasoning down in there all right so these are pretty much ready to go one more thing that I like to do to help these really lay flat is get my scissors in there right at that breast bone and just give it a little snip now these things can lay totally flat and now our breasts are all on roughly the same surface as our thighs so that they can cook in the same amount of time today we're gonna be injecting these birds and we do that for a couple of reasons one it adds a lot of extra flavor especially with the ingredients that we're using today and it's going to be super simple three ingredients tons of flavor the other reason we do it is to make sure that this bird ends up as juicy and moist as possible all right so we're gonna go for a good balance of fruitiness sweetness saltiness and a little bit of spice our base is peach nectar today a really unique flavor that tastes fantastic on chicken I'm gonna go with a cup of that peach nectar then we're gonna add to that a couple teaspoons each of Yardbird by Plowboys fantastic chicken rub and a little spice and a little vinegar with a couple teaspoons of killer hogs hot sauce well stir to dissolve what we can in the yard bird we're still gonna have some chunks in there very small particulate that will be just fine in the injector needle all right so we're gonna load up the pistol grip injector and I'll get started on this guy going into the breasts we're just gonna get in there create a little pocket fill that pocket up when it's full it'll start to come back out since we're over here by the wing we might as well give him a little bit of love so I'm just kind of working in a grid to cover all of the meat and we'll have to show this when it's finished but the chicken inside you know it's purely white when it's all the way cooked it's gonna have this gnarly peach juice color to it which looks really rad you won't ever notice that once you get into your barbecue sandwich because we're going to shred it all up just gonna come in from both sides of the chicken leg here one pump in the center another great thing about all of this is it retains this juice and even if it comes out as we start shredding it you just work it right back into the meat now we're going to hit it with the seasoning and we're going to start on the back side we're using that Yardbird once again the Plowboys Yardbird going for the backside of the thighs this bit of breast that's exposed at the top and then we'll flip it over gonna hit at the top of the legs and thighs there and then we can cover those back up and pull those up and get the breast meat exposed full coverage they're coming down from the top and then we'll go ahead and hit the skin pretty easy these are just about ready to go might just tuck these wingtips back to kind of hold all that in together but these are ready to go to the smoker I want to place these birds right here on the top I love the way the smoke rolls over them from below and then heads out toward the stack we'll just go side by side for now we can always rotate later to even out the coat I'm just gonna let these things sit in here and soak up the smoke for a while we're gonna keep tending that fire we're checking on it every 30 to 45 minutes to roll another log over try and keep our temperature perfectly steady and then we'll keep an eye on the birds they'll probably look at them about 45 minutes into the cook see if we want to change the way they're situated because the color happens a little bit differently with the fire down at the far side you've got a hot spot down here and as it leaves out the stack you've got a warmer spot up here so we're gonna take all that into account sit back and enjoy the day we're about 45 minutes into the cook now so like I said we want to take a look see if we want to rotate these birds around a little bit they're looking pretty good but I don't think it would hurt to spin everything around yeah you can see on this bird that's closer to the fire we're getting some great color down here on the thighs a little bit lighter on the left side so I think we'll just go ahead and flip these and while we're at it might as well roll another log over the other component in our chicken sandwich today is the slaw we're doing a blue cheese slaw to go on top of our barbecued chicken so I'm gonna get that prepped up while the chickens smoking away so as a little time to sit and soak up all that slaw dressing so what we have here is a head of savoy cabbage I'm gonna get this thing quartered down probably end up needing about half of it for this recipe we're looking to get four cups of thinly sliced cabbage next for this slaw we're going to do some carrots about one cup of carrots - 4 cups of cabbage now for the dressing we're essentially just making a chipotle blue cheese dressing which is very versatile you can use it on this slaw but you can also just use it to dip your wings in any number of things we're starting off with a cup of sour cream you're gonna add to that 1/3 cup of mayonnaise a few tablespoons of buttermilk I've got one chipotle chili and adobo sauce a quarter teaspoon of smoked paprika a little bit of white wine vinegar and some blue cheese crumbles now if you want it to be a little bit chunky just add about half your blue cheese now and the other half after we blitz this down one more thing we've got a clove of garlic I'm just gonna crush that and peel it and give it a rough chop and then we'll take care of it when we blitz the whole dressing all together now we got that smoothed out a bit so I'm going to add a little bit of smoked salt a little bit of black pepper whoo and we're gonna blitz it one more time perfect we get a taste mmm we haven't added the rest of the blue cheese crumbles back yet which is good because I think I could use this a little bit more of that funk but I'm gonna go ahead and dress the salad will kind of crush it all together and then we'll add the blue cheese and mix that in a little bit more gently so you can give it a little squeeze it's not gonna hurt anything to break down those cell walls just a little bit start to soften the slaw and we'll take the rest of that blue cheese mix that in mmm this will be a really great funky little slaw to go on top of our sweet and smoky chicken so I'm gonna wrap this up throw it into the fridge and be ready to go when our chickens come off the smoker well our birds have come up to Tim they're right around 160 in the breasts which is what we're looking for it's been about three hours but there's a lot of variables I've also got this cook done in about two hours in the past so you just want to keep an eye on it try to keep it as consistent as possible but the most important thing is that finishing temperature and the breasts 160 so through rotating these birds part way through that cook we've kind of kept their temperatures pretty even ones just a couple degrees ahead of the other one we also threw on some of these kielbasa just to go along with our chicken sandwiches maybe we'll get crazy and throw some on a bun with our chicken so we're gonna go right into how to break one of these birds down after you've got it smoked for pulled chicken for sandwiches look at that just falling apart already now these are gonna be 175 Plus which is great for dark meat they get super velvety once it passes that 170 mark and our brush should be just super tender dead-on and juicy so I'm just picking all of the meat from the bones you can set those bones aside and discard them we don't need those any longer and we open up the breast crack this guy open I'm just gonna see juice come pouring out of there look at that and make sure to keep that go right on top of all that dark meat so there's that wild color we were talking about from the peach injection but just look how juicy and tender this is that finishing temperature is key but adding that injection adds so much in the way of flavor and ensures you don't dry your chicken out and this stuff shreds right apart by hand I swear every time I get to the wing on a smoked bird and I go to pull it to put it in there I can't wait I can actually taste the injection because we pumped it right in the center there that's a smoky tidbit but that meets some of my favorite of me so I'm just gonna run this back through the juices that have collected as we shred this kind of rehydrates every bit of that and then I'm gonna come in here and get some barbecue sauce on there I've got the Firebug hot today a great sweet sauce with the fruitiness to it which should go well with the peach that we've already put in there and just toss all of that to coat I'm not trying to soak it but I do want to coat our chicken with a little bit of sweetness all right I'm gonna start building these sandwiches starting with some spicy dill pickles on the bottom I like to load them up then we'll come in with our sweet and smoky pulled chicken gonna top that off with our slaw I'm not usually huge on sauces but I love a little bit of mustard sauce with this barbecue chicken sandwich I love the Tang and the sweetness it brings just another element to add to the flavor profile now we just need some of that blue cheese slaw that's a beautiful looking chicken sandwich all right I saved one back so we could try out our little sausage chicken burger that looks like it desperately needs a little bit of mustard right on top of that a little bit of chicken there pickles on top switch it up huh all right I just want to you know how I like to see the profile let's open this baby up it looks like it needs a bite taken out of it ooh that's juicy it's not gonna be clean to eat man it tastes good a chicken is so smoky the pretzel bun holds everything together which is really cool and the slaw cools things off just a little bit of funkiness from that blue cheese pretty much all I could ask for thank you guys so much for watching be sure to check out a tbq comm for all of the products featured in today's video or just click that link in the video description down below if you enjoyed the recipe hit the subscribe button if you have any questions or comments oh there's anything you'd like to see me cook let me know in the comment section down below and let's be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques head over to 80 BB q comm slash the sauce all things BBQ where BBQ legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 87,453

Rating: 4.9547558 out of 5

Keywords: allthingsbbq, all things bbq, all things barbecue, smoked chicken, chicken, bbq, barbecue, pulled chicken, Yoder Smokers, offset smoker, stick burner, spatchcock, slaw, cole slaw, chef tom, bbq chicken, Wichita, Wichita smoker, pickles, bbq sauce, barbecue chicken, pretzel roll, the sauce

Id: AZTseen2hes

Length: 20min 53sec (1253 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 10 2019