How to Smoke Chicken Wings on a Weber Kettle. The Easy Way.

welcome to uncle bird's barbecue and i'm your favorite uncle uncle bird in today's video we're going to cover how to smoke chicken wings on the weber kettle keep in mind this technique will work on any charcoal grill so let's go ahead get started today we have a family pack of chicken wings first thing we need to do is take the chicken out of the pack and we're using bigger wings one of the things you want to keep in mind is that when you're smoking the grilling wings you really want to use a bigger wing because it's going to stand up to the smoking and grilling process and still remain juicy we're going to be using a plastic cutting board a 6 inch bony knife and a pair of oxo good grip poultry shears to prepare the chicken wings we're mainly going to use the bony knife to scrape the wings clean and to remove any remaining feathers you want to make sure you get into the crevices and remove the yellow bits and any remaining feathers now as far as cutting up the wings the poultry shears are going to be a better option for cutting in my opinion because one they're a little bit safer to use and you don't have to worry about sharpening them and knowing how to sharpen a knife they stay pretty sharp you just got to keep the the shears closed you're not using them so the edge does not get chipped we will be using whole wings cut in three different ways the first way is what i call a party cut which means that the wing will be cut into individual sections and the wingtip is discarded or used for stock the second cut will be a hooter style cut which has a drumette cut from the wing get but it's still going to have the wing tip attached and the third cut is what i call the love cut which is basically it has the drum mat and the wing get together but the wingtip is cut off and discarded or used for stock and you're going to want to use your your poultry shears at this point to make all your cuts you just want to make sure that you're cutting at the joint so that it makes a real clean cut now the advantage that all three of these cuts have over just leaving the wing hole is that they allow the wings to lay flat which is going to give us better airflow and allow us to really pile the wings on top of each other so they'll self-based and they don't get caught that you don't have the little tip in that gets caught in the grate as often the brine we're making today is simply plain salt and water no need for any type of special salts because they're all going to work and taste the same i just use cheap iodine salt to make our brown we're going to use a 2 cup clear measuring cup and a 5 quart mixing bowl take your measuring cup pour in one cup of water and then you can pour in any type of plain salt as long as it's a plain salt and you're going to pour that salt until the water reaches the one and a half cup mark you'll mix it with a spoon and pour into your five quart mixing bowl and then we'll add water until it reaches the four quart mark which is a gallon you want to stir well and then you'll add that brine to the chicken that has been placed into the ziploc bag today we'll be cooking on the 22-inch weber kettle classic now you want to open up the bottom vent all the way and you want to add the bottom grate so that we can hold our hardwood charcoal place a hickory split on the grill which is going to be used to hold our hardware charcoal and it's going to also add flavors to wood burns and we're using hardwood briquettes because it only has a vegetable binder and it won't have the chemical taste that you normally get in regular charcoal and i'm using hickory you want to use a strong wood like okay hickory because the chicken is really not going to be on the grill for a long time and we want to get the maximum amount of flavor in there while we can so go ahead and fill your chimney up with some hardwood charcoal i'll go ahead and pour about two thirds of the unlit coals on the side of the hardwood split now you can use a couple pieces of newspaper or paper to light the remaining about one-third that remains in the chimney starter and after your charcoals are turned white you want to pour all the unlit coals on top of the coals that have not been lit now the coals will burn down like a candle wick and that'll help with your temperature control you'll have a lot more even temperatures and you don't have to worry about having any type of you don't have to worry about having the taste of any type of accelerant like lighter fluid now i do want the wood to start burning before i put the top on to preheat the grill for cleaning use a ball of aluminum foil to clean the grill if you don't have a grill brush now put the top back on so the heat can stabilize and now we can remove our chicken from the brine and season it up today to season our chicken i'm using uncle bird's hen peck season which is basically a mix of granulated garlic granulated onion various seasonings and spices plus a whole lot of love now you have to use a salt-free seasoning or the chicken's gonna be way too salty again for the people in the back and those that ain't paying attention use a salt free seasoning and if you're not sure if your favorite rug contains salt or not all you do is turn around and look at the ingredient list so if you don't have a salt free rub a real easy quick delicious rub that you can use is to simply use one part granulated onion one part granulated garlic and a half part of black pepper don't have to be super high quality you can use that black pepper that you're getting a little tin can now you want to go ahead and season your chicken liberally which is salt free seasoning of choice go ahead and place them in a bowl toss them up a little bit and now that now that we know our grill is hot and the smoke is blue we can go ahead and add our chicken wings now for the chicken wings just so that you're aware i always leave my top and bottom vents wide open because chicken is going to be cooked best hot and fast does not have a lot of the fat and connector tissues that other meats have now we'll want to rotate the chicken during the cooking process and i generally use a clockwise rotation with the wings so it's clockwise rotating them towards and away from the fire and then i also make use of a pile to self-base the wings that are on top of each other so by piling them on top of each other when the fat melts it'll basically be basting the wings that are beneath it and this also will help prevent overcooking now throughout the cook we're going to spray a couple times with distilled white vinegar i just used plain vinegar and before you make the first braid you want to just make sure that your wings the skin is already dry so before you do the first spray again make sure that the wings are dry and as long as they're dry you can go ahead and spray them and what that'll do is one the vinegar is going to tenderize the chicken while it's cooking and it's also going to keep the surface wet and as long as your surface is wet it'll continue to absorb the tasty hardwood smoke now you're going to want to go ahead and check the final temperature using an instant read thermometer and as long as we hit 162 degrees you can go ahead and take them off because carryover cooking will carry them to the to the final temperature to the final safe temperature of 165 degrees you just want to remember food is cooked by temperature not time we're just using time as a way to estimate the final temperature but again you still want to use the instant read thermometer to check it just to make sure now now that the wings are finished at this point you can go ahead and well you don't want to just eat them because it's too damn hot but you can go ahead and place them in the microwave so they can rest for a few minutes so it gives the the heat and the juices a chance to redistribute throughout the meat but honestly the best way to rest them is to use a preheated cooler basically what you do is you use a small cooler that you went ahead and placed some hot water in and you close the top leave it close to about 30 minutes you pour the water out dry and drop in your chicken and you just let it rest for about 15 minutes but if you can't wait that's fine you can go ahead and dig in and that way your skin to be crispy so there you have it that's going to be about the size of it if you've got any questions please feel free to leave me a comment and if you found value in this video please give your uncle a like and subscribe to the channel and watch the next video [Music] you

Channel: Uncle Birds BBQ

Views: 10,886

Keywords: smoked chicken wings, chicken wings, smoked wings, grilled wings, smoked chicken, bbq chicken, weber grill, bbq chicken wings, smoked chicken wings recipe, smoked chicken wings weber kettle, crispy chicken wings, smoked chicken wings on weber kettle grill, grilled wings weber kettle, grilled wings charcoal, grilled wings recipe, grilled wings crispy, smoked wings recipe, weber grill cooking, weber grill smoking, chicken wings on the grill

Id: eMO1KhzknP8

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021