- Mar 21, 2015
- 25
- 18
This is my first attempt at cooking on the WSM. Things went pretty smooth, but for anyone whose read my previous posts knows that my journey to here has been anything but smooth.
I used Jeff's pulled chicken instructions and did everything but the pull, we were so hungry by the end we decided to just dig in and eat. The other difference was that I used chicken thighs with the bone and skin instead of boneless/skinless.
I put Jeff's sauce on the top 12 pieces with about 45 minutes to spare, left the 12 on the bottom rack dry. I'll be putting sauce on all of the piece in future smokes because they turned out so great. I learned that the bottom rack gets much hotter, makes sense!
The thing I was most surprised about was how well the temp stabilized. It was pretty windy out and for a first run after everything that I read I expected really high temps. Making small adjustments and waiting 5 or so minutes for it to stabilize was crucial. It stayed close to 230F for most of the cook, I had a few drops, especially near then end and after looking inside I realized some more briquettes were needed so I fired them up in my chimney before dumping them in. That was around 150F internal temps for the meat, the smoker was at about 210F.
Here is what the probe read for most of the cook, 230F! ;)
As Jeff's instructions said I cooked the thighs to 170F internal temp. This is a photo of the bottom rack without the sauce just before pulling them out.
And the finished product, the pieces that were cooked with sauce.
Definitely happy with how things turned out, everyone loved these chickens. Thanks to everyone on this forum and especially Jeff for his rub and sauce recipe!
I used Jeff's pulled chicken instructions and did everything but the pull, we were so hungry by the end we decided to just dig in and eat. The other difference was that I used chicken thighs with the bone and skin instead of boneless/skinless.
I put Jeff's sauce on the top 12 pieces with about 45 minutes to spare, left the 12 on the bottom rack dry. I'll be putting sauce on all of the piece in future smokes because they turned out so great. I learned that the bottom rack gets much hotter, makes sense!
The thing I was most surprised about was how well the temp stabilized. It was pretty windy out and for a first run after everything that I read I expected really high temps. Making small adjustments and waiting 5 or so minutes for it to stabilize was crucial. It stayed close to 230F for most of the cook, I had a few drops, especially near then end and after looking inside I realized some more briquettes were needed so I fired them up in my chimney before dumping them in. That was around 150F internal temps for the meat, the smoker was at about 210F.
Here is what the probe read for most of the cook, 230F! ;)
As Jeff's instructions said I cooked the thighs to 170F internal temp. This is a photo of the bottom rack without the sauce just before pulling them out.
And the finished product, the pieces that were cooked with sauce.
Definitely happy with how things turned out, everyone loved these chickens. Thanks to everyone on this forum and especially Jeff for his rub and sauce recipe!
