Smoked whole chicken is a recipe that can feed a lot of people for any event, without costing you a lot of money. When done right this will also result in a very most, flavorful chicken, that will have people wanting you to cater every event they have once they taste your smoked whole chicken!
Ingredients
- 1-2 Whole Chickens
- Little Lu's Birdie BBQ Rub
To get things started for this recipe, the first thing you're going to want to do is remove the back bone / spine from your chickens. We're going to Spatchcock these chickens as this is an easy way to get great flavor throughout the chicken, and also help it cook a bit faster. PRO TIP: REMOVE THE BREAST BONE after removing the back bone. Most people don't do this, but this will help your chicken lay more flat, a lot easier.
Once you have your chickens spatchcocked, and laid out flat on the rack you're going to want to very liberally apply our Birdie Rub to the front and the back of the chicken. Make sure to lift the wing flaps, as well as move those drumsticks to get a very even coating of seasoning on the entire chicken.
Once the chicken is evenly coated with your preferred chicken rub, let it sit on the counter for about 30 minutes or so, and go get your pit going in the mean time. For this cook we're going to run our Mikes Custom Steel Werkz pit at 275 for the entire cook. and we're going to use Gourmet Wood Texas Post Oak. Hickory and mesquite would also work for this cook, we just prefer the way Post Oak tastes with our Birdie Rub.
Once the pit is rolling at 275 degrees, it's time to get that chicken on the pit. This cook is going to take anywhere between 2 and 2 and a half hours depending on your cooker, and the temperature you're running at.
Once the chicken is on the pit you're going to let them roll for about an hour to an hour and a half. Once they hit the hour and a half mark, you're going to melt some butter to baste the chickens with. You can either use salted or un-salted butter. Our birdie rub has a good bit of salt in it, so to prevent over salting, we just used un-salted butter. Basting the chickens with this butter, will help the skin crisp up, and get you a nice crispy bite on the outside.
From here you're just going to let the chicken cook for another hour or so until it hits 160 internal. 165 is the temperature you'd like to pull, but I prefer to pull at 160 for whole chickens. This will make sure the chicken isn't overcooked and dry, but at 160, whole chicken wrapped in tinfoil will carry over to 165 and finish cooking.
Once the chicken hits 160, take it off and pull it. You'll then wrap it in foil for about 45 minutes, and throw it in your Magellan Hard 55 QT Cooler to rest. This will allow it to carry over cook to 165, as well as lock in all of those juices.
