Inaugural run of my (new to me) smoker

[Johnny Mo]

So as I mentioned in my intro post I "inherited" a smoker from my brother in law who is moving and has one at his new location already.  I was originally planning to do Disney style Turkey legs for my daughter but couldn't get them in time so I decided on chicken.  Thanks to this forum I was able to overcome any intimidation I had on brining and smoking.

I used Viper125's recipe but just quantity adjusted my brine mix to use Prague Powder instead.  I also made up a batch of Jan's dry rub.  Chicken prep on the drums - I pulled the skin way back to expose all the meat to brine, brined for 36 hours.  Rinsed, dried and then added Jan's rub and got it under the skin as well.   Took my smoker up to 200-225 and then dropped in the chicken.  About 2 hours later using hickory pucks, my remote thermometer beeped and I took them off and dropped them onto the Weber at 375 and sauced 1/2 of the drums with a Bourbon BBQ sauce recipe I found (wasn't sure how family would lean sauced or not).  FTC and served about 30-40 min later (sorry it was Sunday and we needed to do our pasta with sauce & meatballs first)  Then the chicken was opened up and disappeared faster than anything else on the table.  I had to grab a drum and a half breast for my boy away at college so he could pick it up from me in NYC on Monday.

A couple things Jan's rub, delicious.  The flavor was awesome, I may have popped them in too early and dried them out a little but I think the FTC helped as there was definitely some residual juice goodness at the bottom of the tray to soak up with the cut breast.  Next time I'll take them out at 155-160 then hot grill to crisp up the skin to 165.

The boy picked up chicken on Monday morning and this is the happy text I got from him : Oh yeah, this chicken is sooo good, when I get home lets experiment with different flavors and stuff this was great.  So I'm pretty happy that my son wants to learn how to get into smoking and experimenting with different foods and flavors.  Looking forward to all this fun.

[Habanero Smoker]

Glad to read your inaugural smoke went well.

[Edward176]

Glad to hear it went well. Sounds like you've created more work for yourself, LOL it a lot of fun smoking things that family loves.