Cooking up some chicken this weekend. **Updated w/ Qview.**

That's awesome, just what I was looking for.  Thanks so much for the help.  I'll post pics of the preperation and final product on Monday.  Thanks again.

As stated earlier in this thread, I have an update on my chicken cook today with Qview.

Yesterday day afternoon I placed 5 boneless and skinless chicken breasts in a small bucket of Slaughterhouse Poultry Brine.  I then sealed it up and placed in the frig to soak overnight (about 22 hours in total).


This afternoon, I took the chicken out of the brine, washed them off, and trimmed them up.


Next I took the advise of Eric, and rather then inject the chicken I spiced up the rub.  The rub itself is one that I kind of made up using several different recipes I found.  Here's the recipe of the rub I made.

• 3/4 cup kosher salt
• 1/4 cup smoked hickory salt
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
• 1/2 cup of ground turbinado sugar
• 1/4 cup of chili powder
• 1/8 cup jalapeno powder
• 1/8 cup chipotle powder
• 1/2 cup smoked paprika
• 1/2 cup granulated garlic
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper

I then lightly sprinkled a layer of rub on both the back and the front of the chicken breast.  Since I had the smoker going, I decided to make a batch of smoke Mac n Cheese as well.
 



Next I place the chicken and mac n cheese in a 250 degree smoker.  Since I used the gasser for this smoke, I used a 50/50 mix of apple and hickory pellets in my AMNTS.
 


After about an hour of cooking I checked the IT on the chicken, and it was sitting around 125 degrees.  At this point I did a little experiment.  In order to keep the breast from drying out, I placed the chicken in a disposable aluminum tray that had about a 1/2 stick of cubed butter at the bottom.  Now this isn't an original idea, as I have seen many people do this, but it was a first for me.  I then placed foil over the tray and put it back into the smoker for another 30 to 40 minutes.
 

At about the 1 hour and 40 minute mark, I checked the IT of the chicken again, and this time they were all hitting at 160 to 163 at the thickest part of the breast.  It was time to pull them and the Mac n Cheese off.



The finished product, my version of Monday Night Football's Blue Plate Special.


The chicken turned out fantastic.  I was a little worried about applying a rub with salt to meat that had already been brined.  But by the time I realized what I did, the meat was already in the smoker cookin'.  In the end it didn't really matter though.  The chicken was moist and not salty at all.  The rub did add a nice kick.  Not to overpowering, but enough to let you know the heat was there.

Thanks again for the feedback and advise.  I will definitely make this chicken again in the future.

I got the Mac n Cheese idea from reading a couple of the threads in this forum. So far it's been more of an experiment. I am basically using a recipe that came from MasterBuilt's website (). The recipe is very easy, as the cheese sauce is mainly cheese soup. I will eventually make my own sauce, but wanted to get a basic process down. Don't get me wrong the recipe is tasty, but definitely could use an improvement for my taste.

As for the getting smoke into the mac n cheese, I smoke it for an hour without the final topping stirring twice. Once at the 30 minute mark, and once at the hour mark. At that point I add the final topping of shredded cheese and panko bread crumbs. The first time I assembled everything at once, and the smoke never penetrated the cheese topping. This time I made sure that the macaroni and cheese sauce were exposed to the smoke.