First Smoke

After weeks of reading and finally buying and modifying my new smoker (more on this later), I've finally smoked my first meat! The easy to smoke and not screw up whole chicken. Two actually.

Process:

1) 10pm the night before I brined the chicken in a Coleman cooler. Ingredients:

1 gal water
3/4 cup table salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp black pepper
1/3 cup soy sauce

Above mostly stolen from here.

Then I added a bag full of ice and just laid the whole bag on top and let it sit overnight (10 hours)

2) 8am, pulled chicken out of cooler and let sit on counter to come up to temperature

3) 830am, started a chimney full of Kingsford charcoal

4) 9am, added a chimney (approx) of unlit charcoal to charcoal pan of smoker as well as a couple chunks of cherry wood (not soaked). Dumped lit charcoal from chimney on top. Foiled the bottom of the water pan and filled with plain water. And finally, put chicken on the top rack of the smoker.

Temperature 250 - 290

5) 10am, brushed Italian dressing on outside of chicken to keep skin moist

6) 1030am added 6-8 new charcoal chunks and a fresh piece of cherry to fire and shook pan to clear ashes

7) 12pm (3 hours in) internal temperature on one bird was 180 and 172 on the other. We're done.



Lessons learned on first cook:

1) Don't try to adjust too many things at once, wild swings in temperature result from too much fiddling. Adjust one thing at a time and wait 15 minutes.

2) Don't throw a new wood chunk directly on the side where the thermometer is. The resulting flame skews the reading and makes for a panicked BBQer when the thermometer reads 400.

3) Brining is key, makes for a great tasting finished product and allows you to screw it up slightly and not notice.