Smoked chickens!

In years past, I have smoked Boston butts and made pulled pork for several friends parties. Recently, at a close friends 25th wedding anniversary party, the host brought in a professional barbecue and smoking company to provide smoked pigs, pulled pork, and smoked chicken. It has inspired me to attempt to duplicate, or exceed, the professionals product.

As the cook at the event wasn’t going to give me the rub recipe, I devised my own. It is a mixture of a couple of store-bought rubs with some enhancement on my part. The goal is to get a sweet and spicy flavor combined with the smokiness of the wood.

The first step is marination. The chicken parts, 8 whole chickens cut up, were sprinkled liberally with the rub and placed in the refrigerator for 24 hours, sealed.

9:00 a.m. Monday. Time to start the fire. I use roughly 5 lbs. of charcoal and 4 pieces of wood soaked overnight in water and wrapped in foil, to smoke the chicken. As always, my trusty helper was ready to put the chicken on the grill!

Here are the chicken parts loaded up and ready to smoke. There is another layer of chicken below the one on the top rack, which is double sacked on our toaster oven rack.

And of course, once everything is loaded, time to close the lid!

A mere 45 minutes in and the temperature is around 190 degrees, I am assuming it will heat up a little bit!

And, a quick peek to see how everyone is doing!

Four hours later……………………………..

I hope everyone enjoys it as I have already sampled a piece and it is “OK”! 🙂