Brand newbies

[anginak]

My husband just treated himself to a late b-day gift of The Original Bradley Smoker.  He's managed to smoke some perfect wild Alaskan King Salmon from the lovely Kenai River so far.  Mmmmm.

??? What I'm wondering about is how long (time wise) would you anticipate smoking a whole chicken of approx.  3-4 pounds?  Do you experienced smokers rely mostly on temperature rather than time? 

Actually, I'm a recipe follower, not a feel-my-way-around cooker.  Does anyone have a list of approx. smoking hours for all different kinds of meat?

:) Thanks much.   We are looking forward to smoking a lot of stuff in the near future.

[Wildcat]

Welcome to the forum.  Take a look at this site and many of your questions will be answered.  http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?t=481

[hillbillysmoker]

Welcome to the forum. There are plenty of friendly folks here who are always anxious to help or to share in your adventures. I hope you enjoy your time here.

[KyNola]

Welcome aboard.  I see the guys have already waded in on your questions.  One hint for you, when you smoke/cook the chickens, make sure the vent is 100% open the entire time.  Poultry holds a lot of moisture.  You need the vent all the way open to let that escape your smoker as it will collect and run down the walls and out of your smoker and will also have an effect on the temp your smoker can hold.  As for precise cooking times, too many variables for specific time.  Use a temp probe to check the temp of the meat.  Many of us use the Maverick ET-73.  It is a dual probe thermometer.  One measures the temp in the box while the other measures the temp of the meat.   Another thing you can do is to move the chicken to your house oven and finish the cooking there once you have applied the smoke.  You'll get the hang of it and we are all here to help you.

Let us know how it goes,
KyNola

[FLBentRider]

W E L C O M E  to the Forum anginak!

The others have you on your way. For the chicken, it depends on the size of the bird, but most of the ones We do run about 3 to 4 hours, but internal meat temp is much more important than time.

Enjoy your smoker!

[Carter]

Welcome Aboard Anginak,

I've done quite a few chickens recently of the Beer Can variety.

I like to put the chicken in the smoker for an hour to hour and a half.  Then I transfer it to my gas BBQ and use indirect heat.  I like how the Q crisps up the skin.  Three to four hours is about right if you stick with the low and slow methodology.

Having said that, one of the other reasons i like the BBQ is that I can elevate the heat if I want to get the chicken done.  If I'm approaching the time when I'd like to be finished the bird, I move the heat up to 375 (like we do in the Oven in the Winter).  I know that 375 will do a small chicken in roughly an hour to hour and a half, so if I've done an hour in the smoker, I'm probably looking at another hour or so on the grill.

I use a dual thermometer monitoring both the BBQ temperature and the internal temperature in the thigh section of the bird.

Looking forward to reading your results.

Carter