Today I smoked a chicken for the first time. I used a locally-raised, free-range, organic chicken that weighed in at 5 pounds. I skinned it first, then using diggingdogfarm's amazing equilibrium brine/cure calculator, (factoring out the estimated weight of the bones as well as the skin I removed), I made a 2% salt and 2% sugar brine. I used no other seasonings - just salt and brown sugar - nothing else. I let the bird brine for 24 hours in the fridge.
Out of the fridge this morning, I cut out the backbone and flattened the bird (spatchcocked), then laid it directly on a rack and placed it in the middle position on my SI-1. I didn't add any sort of rub to the surface of the skinned bird - bare flesh, and nothing else. With two chunks of apple wood (3 ounces total) in the wood box, I inserted a temperature probe into the thickest part of the breast meat, then set the smoker to 200℉. After an hour I raised the temp to 225℉ and in another 2 hours (3 hours total) the internal temp was 165℉.
This smoke was purely experimental for me - I had no specific meal planned for it. After it rested for 10 or so minutes, I separated the bird into two equal halves. I devoured (for lunch) the leg and most of the thigh, then cut through the breast meat, ate a slice, and found it was both juicy and tender.
Repeat -
very juicy and
very tender - I couldn't be happier with the results.
The amount of smoke was perfect. The smoky flavor had thoroughly permeated the flesh of the leg and thigh - yum. The center-most part of the breast meat had some smoke flavor, but less so.
I took the other half and vacuum sealed it to spend a day or two in the fridge where, from what I've read on this forum and elsewhere, I can expect the smoke flavor to penetrate deeper into the flesh.
