- Jul 5, 2011
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We just have a fairly simple Weber smoker/grill (bought at Lowe's). I have only smoked store bought birds. We smoke 2 at a time. Smoking meat can be expensive, burning up alot of lump charcoal and smoking chips. So we fill up the grill. We will rub the chicken or inject whatever floats your boat, and let it sit while we prep the smoker. We have a chimney (bought at Lowe's) that you fill with charcoal (we use lump charcoal) and a burning newspaper under it to get the charcoal buring...takes 15 minutes or so to really get it going, you know when it ready when the flames start coming out the top of the charcoal. Fill up a bowl with water and put some of the smoking chips into the water to soak. I like the cherry wood, there are several flavors to pick from. Dump the burning charcoal on one side of the grill. We have a pan that belonged with an old toaster oven that we fill with liquid. (water, beer, apple juice...sometime all three) that pan is placed touching the charcoal but extends far enough across to be mostly under the chickens. Found out if the pan is not in contact or pretty close to the charcoal it does not get hot enough to do much good. We stuff an onion into each of the chickens cavity to keep the bird moist. Then place the birds on the smoker breast side up and breast toward the heat. Put a thermometer in the thickest part. add more fresh charcoal and some of the soaked chips directly to the hot burning charcoal. Put the lid on and watch the smoke roll!
We learned as we went. Our smoker gets too hot off the start..over 300 but if you close the damper underneath and close up the lid damper it starts to suffocate a little and bring down the temp. The dampers control the temp and opening and closing the lid alot is not a good idea. Ideally you want your temp to stay between 250 and 275. Keep fresh charcoal going in periodically if you let it burn down too much it takes a long time to get it burning again. We have had to fire up the chimney again and dump it in because we did not get fresh charcoal in soon enough. It is the dampers that control the temp for the most part NOT the charcoal. Keep your pan liquid up, don't let it run dry. Read somewhere the smoking chips only flavor for a couple of hours after that it does not flavor much so we add chips multiple times for the first hour then lay off after that. Sometimes we put the chips in again later just because we want the environment and smell of the smoke. We love it and smoke chicken almost every weekend. Any leftovers from the smoked chicken dinner gets prepared into fajitas, chopped barbeque chicken sandwiches etc. the following week. NONE of it goes to waste! Hope it helps. Good Luck with your smoker!
We learned as we went. Our smoker gets too hot off the start..over 300 but if you close the damper underneath and close up the lid damper it starts to suffocate a little and bring down the temp. The dampers control the temp and opening and closing the lid alot is not a good idea. Ideally you want your temp to stay between 250 and 275. Keep fresh charcoal going in periodically if you let it burn down too much it takes a long time to get it burning again. We have had to fire up the chimney again and dump it in because we did not get fresh charcoal in soon enough. It is the dampers that control the temp for the most part NOT the charcoal. Keep your pan liquid up, don't let it run dry. Read somewhere the smoking chips only flavor for a couple of hours after that it does not flavor much so we add chips multiple times for the first hour then lay off after that. Sometimes we put the chips in again later just because we want the environment and smell of the smoke. We love it and smoke chicken almost every weekend. Any leftovers from the smoked chicken dinner gets prepared into fajitas, chopped barbeque chicken sandwiches etc. the following week. NONE of it goes to waste! Hope it helps. Good Luck with your smoker!