Reach new levels of poultry nirvana with our “go to” recipe for slow smoked chicken!
Smoked chicken is like liver. You either love it or hate it. In the South, you can start a fight by voicing a preference for either smoked chicken or fried chicken. For me, it’s all about the skin. Fried chicken is worthless unless it crunches. Smoked chicken, Georgia style, is big, bold, and assertive, but the skin, although it is packed with flavor, is not crispy. The only way to tell which side of the chicken wire fence you’re on is to try it. Fortunately, it’s easy to make. This method will produce a delicate, moist bird if you don’t overcook it, so there is no need to even consider brining it.
Georgia Style Smoked Chicken Recipe
Makes:
Takes:
Ingredients
- 4 pound whole chicken
- 2 teaspoons Morton Coarse Kosher Salt (approximately 1/2 teaspoon per pound of meat)
- 2 tablespoons Meathead's Memphis Dust
These recipes were created in US Customary measurements and the conversion to metric is being done by calculations. They should be accurate, but it is possible there could be an error. If you find one, please let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page
Method
- Prep. An hour or three before cooking, split the chicken in half by cutting it with heavy shears. Dig out all that brown goop nestled along the spine (kidneys). In fact, I usually just remove the spine, rinse out the kidneys, toss the spine in a bag, and save it for making stock.
- Sprinkle the chicken with salt. This is called dry brining. The salt migrates into the meat, and helps season it and hold onto moisture. Wet the chicken and dust both sides thoroughly with the spice mix but remember, spices don't penetrate far (I discuss this in my article on marinades).
- Fire up. Preheat your smoker to 325°F. If you are using a grill, set it up for 2-zone or indirect cooking. At 325°F, you can render more fat and crisp the skin a bit.
- Cook. Put the meat in the smoker or on the indirect side of the grill. Add less wood than you normally do. Resist the urge to add more. After you've tasted it you can decide if you want to use more wood next cook. But chicken doesn't need much smoke. Cook for about 1.5 to 2 hours or until the temperature in the thickest part of the meat without touching bone is 165°F.
- Serve. Remove the chicken from the smoker or grill and serve as whole parts, chopped, or pulled.
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
Moderators