One of the best dishes you can make when it comes to BBQ is traditional BBQ chicken. BBQ chicken is one of the staples of BBQ. Here again I make a very simple BBQ chicken that is guaranteed to please.
First you want to start off with the right kind of chicken. As we talked before if you are looking to make chicken breast you are basically going to bake them in a shallow pan of chicken broth or water, but today we are going to be making that finger licking traditional BBQ chicken, I am talking about thighs, quarters, halves however you cut it, chicken that is bone in and skin on (now for this example I will be cooking chicken quarters, but all these same steps apply to thighs, halves whatever you plan to cook).
Step 1: Get your fire started.
Just like anything else, don’t waste time playing around start working on getting your temp up to heat. For this example you are going to be baking your chicken not slow cooking it, so you will want your smoker at 375.
Step 2: Prepping the chicken.
Start by giving your chicken a good wash, and then pat dry as much as you can (you won’t be able to get the chicken completely dry, but get as close as you can). Now like the brisket COVER your chicken with my secret BBQ rub.
Step 3: Musical chairs.
I hope by now you know where your hot spots are on your smoker, this is one time you want to take advantage of that extra heat and get your chicken skin nice and crispy. Now I normally would advise not to open the smoking chamber while you are cooking, but in this case you have to keep those chickens moving (I normally do not flip the chicken I cook them skin side in the case of quarters), you want to rotate the chickens in the hotspot so each piece gets its fair share of face time with the hotspots I normally will move them all around about every 12 to 15 minutes.
Step 4: Sauce glaze
Typically you will cook the chicken to an internal temp of 180 – 185ish. Around 180 I normally put a nice glaze of BBQ sauce on the chicken and then put them back on the smoker for just a few minutes, just long enough that the sauce caramelizes around the chicken.
Once the sauce is nice and caramelized you are set to go, you don’t have to slice or chop chicken so you can just plate, serve, and enjoy! It’s really that simple.
