How to Smoke Chicken with Bite-through Skin

today we're going to learn how to barbecue chicken the way i do it we're going to do barbecued chicken thighs and we're going to do half birds and i'm going to show you how we butcher those into chicken halves and i'm going to show you how we prep the thighs but before that i want to talk a little bit about chicken it's um it's a question that comes up quite a bit to me just just on the side of things what is light meat and what is dark meat and and why are they so different we all know that light meat when you grill it if you cook it too long it dries out really really fast and the dark meat uh you have to cook it up past the temperature much further than that before it gets tender and that's because they're made up of different things and they have different needs in the chicken's body if you know what um fast twitch versus slow twitch muscles are in the in the human uh that's that's a quick it's a good analog for understanding light meat and dark meat and chicken light meat and chicken is fast twitch so it's made for uh really quick movements bursts of energy that's why the breast meat of a chicken is light meat because it's flightless and so it only needs the wings for a burst of energy to get away from something uh or to get up into a tree or to jump up onto something so it uses it very quickly uh the thigh and the leg are used all day long for locomotion and so they have different needs and they're a slow twitch muscle they they have uh they have a lot more myoglobin in them which we've talked about before contains oxygen and the muscle so it doesn't exhaust from its constant use all day keeps that on demand and so it's a darker product there's also more fat there but they are an aerobic muscle because they're used all day long like our calves or our jaw muscles or hand muscles or things that don't exhaust really quickly because they can be used with a lot of long-term endurance versus like our pectoralis muscle or our bicep muscle that is really used for one or two really strong quick isolated movements um and uh they exhaust very quickly as you'll know if you've done a bunch of curls before or anything like that so those are fast twitch muscles they are anaerobic they're glycolytic and that's the way chicken mussels are divided up also and you can use that same logic and move it over to like a wild duck duck breast while duck breast is dark meat but that's because they don't use that for fast twitch they use it for migratory flying long long periods of time so just like the chicken uses its thigh and leg all day to walk around so that's the difference between light and dark meat we're going to be cooking these two products the chicken thighs and the chicken haves to pretty different temperatures the chicken thigh because it is dark meat has a lot more fat in it and it can handle a lot higher temperature so we want to take it to that higher temperature because we want in the end to have bite through skin on this product that's the goal for today yeah and on that on the half chickens we'll also want to have bite through skin so we'll want to take them up as high as we possibly can but we don't want to dry out the light meat the white meat the breast meat yeah and so when you have a skin on uh braised environment you can take white meat up to about 175 after that it'll dry out really fast if you're just grilling light meat with no skin on it and you're cooking on the grill you don't want to take it up past 155 or 160 because it'll dry out immediately but keeping the skin on it and doing a braise does keep it pretty moist so we're going to take our chicken halves up to a different temperature if if you see that happening through this video that's why we're doing that so let's go ahead and get and get ahead with this here one technique we're going to employ before we get started is something called dry brining a lot of people talk about brining their turkeys and brining their chickens and things like that and that works really well you submerse the entire bird in a brine in a salty mixture and that salt through osmosis can move into the meat and season it it doesn't carry really the esters and compounds and flavors associated with the seasonings and spices into the body of the meat but it does carry the salt in and that's important because salt is the most important seasoning for anything dry brining does the same thing where we put the seasoning with salt on it on the product and we stick it in the fridge and let it sit overnight and that way that salt can move into the body so that's what we're going to be doing today and so let's get started with this so we're going to take them out of the bag here and dry them off that's the first thing i always do is i dry these birds off they have a lot of saline solution salt and water that they're packed in as a brine it makes them way way a little bit more so you have to pay a little bit more for them but they're very inexpensive this is why i like to cook these first thing i do is use a pair of poultry shears and i remove the tail also called the pope's nose and then that kind of shows you where the spine is where the backbone is and then you take the shears and you just cut along the side of the backbone all the way up whenever you get up there between the uh the two wings you're done and you then turn it around and you go back down the other side it's really simple see the inside of the bird there and then we'll just cut down this side a pair of poultry shears helps a lot here cuts right through those ribs now this is uh this chicken lays open pretty well but it doesn't want to lay completely flat yet there's one more cut that we make and this cartilage right here between the two wings it's soft cartilage it's very easy to cut so just take your knife and see right there where i'm touching you just make a little slice and it will allow that chicken to lay flat and now we have what is called a spatchcock chicken this is a very popular way of cooking them in the oven you cook it meat side down and skin side up at a very high temperature when you when you cook them and it's an easy way to cook them really quick in the oven and evenly because they're so flat i'm going to go ahead and show you how i remove the ribs also we just cut through them on the spine and they're just barely attached now because we've already cut through them so you can see they pull apart really easily they're just barely attached on there so i like to go ahead and remove them i think it does a couple things one is it allows the smoke now to penetrate all the rest of that flesh where it couldn't have before that we're going to be eating because we're not going to eat the ribs and it allows seasoning on that part of the part of the meat so i do this you don't have to but it's very easy i'll show you on this one too you just get your finger and thumb under there and and pry it up and just touch it with a knife and it pops right off the main connection point of the ribs was on the backbone and we cut right through that so the hard part's done these come right out and then if we were to and what we're going to do next is remove the wing tips we'll have what's ready to be cooked as a spatchcock whole bird chicken today we're going to cut the bird in half and make chicken halves but i just wanted to show you that you could cook one like this if you wanted go ahead and remove any of the large globs of fat especially under the skin where you can get to them because that fat will keep that skin from rendering and keep that skin from getting soft and bite through take the wing tips off and there we have it and like i said i'm going to go ahead and cut right down the middle that's all soft tissue the cartilage is a little tough but a knife goes right through it and go ahead and cut through everything including the skin and then we'll have chicken halves this is the way i like to smoke them in halves like this they're easier to manage you can pick them up with tongs they fit in a pan easier the portion's the right size for smoking i prefer to cook chicken halves over a spatchcock chicken or a whole chicken all right and we're also going to cook chicken thighs today these are plain old bone-in skin-on chicken thighs you get at the supermarket there's only eight in this one they're pretty large but we're going to go ahead and clean them up when you get them they're an absolute mess i mean they have all kinds of extra skin hanging off of them there's pieces of bone fragment in there there's often pieces of cartilage and stuff like that but they're really easy to trim up really quickly i just take anything that's excess off there as far as skin and and fat goes you can see that skin goes way out past where it needs to there's a big line of fat on that piece there will take it off you want to leave enough skin to where you can wrap it around the piece but you don't want all that extra it will just turn the leather in the smoker it'll dry out like beef jerky there's no there's no reason for it to be on there so we take it off and then most of the time i guess and it wasn't the case this in this batch of thighs but most of the time there's this little kneecap like hard cartilage piece right there and i go ahead and remove it um only about half these pieces in this uh and this pack had but i go ahead and remove them really quick sometimes uh usually they all do you and you have to you have to get it off there and that's all now that chicken thigh is ready to be seasoned and cooked so it's pretty it's pretty simple so we'll kind of fly through the rest of these real quick i always say the little yellow styrofoam trays they come with because i season in them and i carry the meat around in them stuff like that you can do this really fast it's it's quick work and it's worth doing like i say they come and they're just an absolute mess now they're nice and clean and ready to eat there's less of that bad skin on there that'll turn to leather so that's awesome so let's season them now i'm going to use my own poultry seasoning it's called payne county bird any poultry or pork seasoning should do really well on poultry uh pork seasons work really well on chicken and vice versa i think they have the same i think the same sort of fats and so they tend to kind of uh be complimented about the same sort of seasonings this is my pan county bird but it is it is sold as a poultry and pork seasoning there's no sugar in it or anything we're going to glaze these later and that's where we get our sugar component and we'll do the same thing with the halves that we butchered earlier we'll go ahead and season them on both sides on the skin side and underneath and we'll put them in a foil pan just like this these guys are all ready to go so they go in the fridge now and they'll sit overnight and dry brine like we talked about earlier give that salt time to move into the meat and season it all so here's those chicken halves all butchered up and ready to go without those ribs look at all the meat we can get the seasoning on there and the smoke will also be able to get in there during the breeze there we go all ready to go into the fridge now since we're cooking the big trailer smoker there's gonna be a little extra room of course so i'm gonna show you how i smoke breakfast sausage it's very simple i buy these one pound rolls of sausage breakfast sausage this is spicy but you can buy whatever kind take the wrappers off and we will put a special seasoning on the outside of them and smoke them alongside the other product this is really really good when it's done so you just take the packaging off and then just kind of mend it back together where you start it up with the knife and then we're going to make a rub for these which is one part of your favorite dry rub barbecue rub and one part brown sugar i'm using pancatty rust it's my it's my kind of all all meat seasoning and rub that i use it's the one that i manufacture so there's one part rust in this case and one part brown sugar and just mix it together and uh pour it on a paper plate and press this sausage into it it's going to look like there's a lot of seasoning adhering to the outside of the sausage like like maybe too much but it's not since you cut it halfway with sugar like that it's it's not too salty at all and you want to do this right before you cook it you don't want to let this sit in the fridge overnight that sugar will pull water out of the product and the sugar sugar will melt right off and take the seasoning with it you want to go ahead and get it in the smoker after you rub it and just like all my videos i am going to go through the fire making process and the process by which i spray oil on the outside of the firebox and clean the grates i just want this to be on all my videos just in case someone watches one of these videos and not all of them this is a this should be muscle memory clean out the firebox first and then i light my fire a good hour before i need it so i'm going to use oil on a paper towel that's extra oil i fried some wings some chicken wings and i kept the oil afterwards and i use it for my fire starter and i make a log cabin style fire light it up and we'll wait an hour and then i go ahead and spray the outside of my firebox with pan release vegetable oil and then we're going to wait an hour i always wait at least an hour and that's how long it takes before that will burn down to a great bed of coals that way you have good clean smoke and there it is that is an incredibly hot fire right there when we put a new piece of wood in there it'll ignite immediately and you'll have less dirty smoke and then i like to use a nylon brush not the metal ones and i spray the whole grate down with oil and polish it with a paper towel clean it all up every time so there is our dry brined product it's been in the fridge overnight except for the sausage and we'll load it up in the pan skin side up chicken is an incredibly easy thing to cook when it comes to barbecuing this is one of the easiest things the bite through skin that we're going to achieve can be really can be really tough uh sorry it could be really hard to do not tough that's what we're trying to do is get a tender product but if you've ever smoked chicken before and you've gotten that dark leathery hard skin you can't chew through and you kind of pull it off and then eat the good meat underneath that's what's happened is you've you've dried out that skin i'm going to show you how you can achieve a good smoky barbecued chicken and still have bite through skin so it's about an hour and a half hour and 40 minutes in and the sausage is done when it hits 160 degrees in the middle the sausage is done and since it's been i think it's an hour and 45 minutes is how long we've been in here but the reason i'm taking it out is because the chicken now that the crust is now set on that chicken if i run my fingernail along the back of it like this it doesn't rub off and there's plenty of smoke flavor on there at this point and now is when i spray them down with i can't believe it's not butter spray or you can brush on melted margarine if you like or you can use butter i like this the best and it's the easiest to apply it adds quite a bit of richness to the product and then i'm going to stick a probe thermometer in the deepest part of the thigh so that we'll know when the chicken has hit 185 degrees and i'm also going to put a probe into the deepest part of the thickest chicken thigh in the thighs over here so that we know uh when they hit 200 degrees i love these little thermometers i found on amazon they come with a magnet in the back a probe thermometer and they have that that wire to probe also these thighs are already at 160 degrees so they're safe to eat right now but they're not soft yet that skin would be really really tough so the sausage is done we'll take it off there take it inside and cut it up after it's rested just a little bit and then we'll tend to the chicken the sausage is really good it's another one of those show stoppers at a party it tastes a lot better than something something like summer sausage if you're having sausage and crackers it goes good with barbecue sauce or cheese some people smoke it like this and then they cook it for breakfast also you can see it has a nice smoke ring on it about 5 8 of an inch deep nice and moist and completely cooked so i slice it just in in slices like this and then like i said i've taken it to a lot of parties and gatherings it's really easy to do it's inexpensive breakfast sausage is a good thing to keep in the freezer for when you're barbecuing so you can throw these on at the same time this is really good it tastes a lot different than you might think it may it doesn't taste like just plain old breakfast sausage it really is kicked up when it's barbecued like this there's several things like that bronze figures like that balloon is like that so that's all done and ready to be wrapped up so we can see we have a 202 degree temperature on our thighs and our half birds are getting there too they're at 179 in their thigh we're going to pull them off at 185 so we're really close but we'll take the thighs out now to rest until the halfs are done i'll show you what they look like since we braised it we've broken down the connective tissue in that skin it is just as soft as can be you could push your finger right through that skin so we only have one step left on these chicken thighs uh which is glazing but we'll wait until the halfs are done we'll glaze them all at the same time just like with glazed ribs i think it adds a lot of flavor it makes them uh it just really makes makes that extra extra a bit of flavor on there when you add a good glaze and here's our halves we're up past 185 now so it's time to pull them off there the breast meat when i checked it was 174 which sounds like it's a really high temperature for white meat if you're grilling white meat like i said earlier that would be way too high of a temperature but since this is surrounded its own fat and its own skin and we're braising it it stays very moist and very juicy so i like to glaze on these drying racks like these cookie drying racks you don't have to you can put it right on the rack of your smoker just makes it easier to move around and i have them i bought them at goodwill or whatever and keeping my garage just for this so we'll put all the chicken thighs up there and then we will polish a glaze on there i'm going to use my own barbecue sauce called hugs bane but any good sweet kansas city style barbecue sauce should do a great job with this you don't have to do this step but i suggest it please try it use a good sweet barbecue sauce on the outside a lot of it drips off and uh it it just enough sticks to where it adds just enough flavor like it's supposed to and you could put that on with a squirt bottle or you could uh dip them in the sauce or whatever you want to do i like to just brush it on so i have more control over where it goes so those thighs are ready to cook a little bit longer in here just like the ribs we want that sauce to stick on there and get kind of tacky so it holds onto the product it takes about 15 or 20 minutes and in a smoker as you can see on that temperature gauge we've lost a lot of our heat so we'll leave it on there quite a while i think i left it on here 20 or 30 minutes today there's our chicken halves and we'll do the same thing with them glaze them up good shhh all right so now that sauce has gotten all tacky and our chicken's done take it inside and we'll let it sit for a little while and rest and uh we'll be able to cut it up and put it all on a platter for for eating you got to be really careful these chickens they will fall two pieces on you it's very tender and because we braised it that white meat of the breast will be very very moist and juicy you'll see here in a minute when we cut it up how well this came out and then there's a thighs that came out perfect those are just like candy especially when you can bite through the skin that really makes it a lot better than when you have to pull the skin off and kind of throw it away there it is this stuff came out spectacular today so here's one of those chicken halves and as you can see you can pull the four quarter from the rear quarter apart really easily because everything is rendered everything is tenderized from that braise and with a breast meat and wing on the right and this is the thigh and leg portion go ahead and cut the drumstick off so you can see the inside of the dark meat see how incredibly moist that is if you've ever smoked a chicken and you've gotten that dry hard leathery skin try a braise like this it really makes a difference and this white meat is just juicy as can be i slice it on the bone like this so people can use tongs or they can use their fork and just and just grab what they want off of there it's very soft very moist you can see all the juice on the cutting board from it and then these thighs they came out great too the skin's very soft the meat pulls right off the bone this is great for making chicken salad or pulled chicken sandwiches or just eating just like this i generally do it but you can see it just comes right apart everything is perfectly cooked very moist the skin is very tender you want that skin to just at the lightest tub pull right apart just like that your teeth go right through it and it won't work on all the chicken pieces all the time sometimes there's enough fat under there it'll still be a little bit rubbery so you can't do much about that but you can see here perfectly bite through in competition we take the skins off remove all the fat from the back and put the skins back on that's a lot of work and then you always can bite through it but it's just not worth that sort of tedious work if you're cooking for friends or family or even yourself so here's that platter this is uh this is everything once it's all done we've got our half chickens we've got our chicken thighs we've got our barbecued smoked sausage so i hope you learned something from this one that bite through skin is very achievable just employ the braise like that follow our temperatures on the bigrockfoods.com resources tab there is there's a couple charts on there for tender cuts and four tough cuts and the chicken is on the tender cuts one so anyway hope you had fun with this and i hope you learned something and i will see you next time thanks

Channel: Payne County Rust

Views: 7,545

Keywords: how to smoke chicken for bite-through skin, bbq, smoked chicken, bbq chicken, barbecue, barbecue chicken, chicken thighs, smoked chicken thighs, chicken, bbq chicken recipe, bite through skin, smoker, smoked chicken recipe, chicken skin, how to bbq chicken, how to bbq, smoked whole chicken, smoked whole chicken recipe, how to smoke a whole chicken, bite through chicken skin, how to make bbq chicken

Id: j38L9cSsJN8

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021