3 whole Chickens at once to much?

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kgo-mb30

Newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2017
19
22
Alabama
Hello everyone,

I am completely new to smoking and just received, assembled, and seasoned my smoker and its ready to get started. I was planning on just smoking one chicken this weekend to get my feet wet but my mom decided she was going to bring me two more chickens to smoke so that when they come we will have enough for some more guests that I told her could come. With that being said I have now gone from smoking one single 5# whole chicken to smoking three 5# whole chickens. I have no idea what I am doing and I've only been able to find posts that talk about smoking two chickens at a time or smoking chickens with other meat which dont really help me. I plan on brining my chickens for 10 hours, rinsing them, drying off the skins, putting a little rub on them and then smoking them over apple wood chips at 250-300 degrees. With one chicken that should only take roughly 3.5-4 hours to smoke/cook. My question comes in to having 3 chickens now. How much longer will it end up taking to smoke 3 at a time instead of just one? I am using a masterbuilt 30 two door propane smoker and will be monitoring my temperature of my smoker and one of the chickens with a thermopro tp08. I also have an instapen type thermometer to check the other chickens every hour or hour and a half or so. I just need to have a good idea of how long this is going to take me to smoke/cook these chickens. I will probably place two chickens on the top rack and one on the next rack down which I know will probably cause the lower one to take a little longer to cook but thats ok because we will be able to at least get started eating on the other two. I plan on preheating my smoker to about 300 degrees so that when I go to put the chickens in the smoker I wont have to worry as much about the temp dropping down to much.

So How long should I expect 3 whole chickens to take to smoke/cook?

also as a bonus how long should I expect 2 whole chickens to take to smoke/cook?
 
First, if you can get your smoker up to 325-350 you'll get nice crispy skin. Second, if you have the room to fit them in there, spatchcock them and they'll only take a couple hours. As long as there is enough room on the grate for good air/heat flow around each hunk of meat, cooking one chicken or three chickens is going to take relatively the same amount of time.
 
First, if you can get your smoker up to 325-350 you'll get nice crispy skin. Second, if you have the room to fit them in there, spatchcock them and they'll only take a couple hours. As long as there is enough room on the grate for good air/heat flow around each hunk of meat, cooking one chicken or three chickens is going to take relatively the same amount of time.

Agreed. After doing a spatcocked one time it will be hard for me to go back to doing a bird any other way.
 
I have a good size smoker with 4 individual racks. Each rack is large enough to be able to lay out a whole rack of ribs without cutting em in half so I know I could go this route if need be. I have never spatchcocked a chicken before so I will look into that. My smoker instructed me to get it up to 400 degrees while seasoning it and it did so with ease so I am pretty sure I can find a point to maintain it at 325-350 if need be. Any step by step recommendations for doing it this way thats different than cooking it at 250-300? The instructions I have say between 250-300 and to mop it with italian dressing at the one hour and two hour marks. do i need to do anything like that to keep the meat from drying out.
 
Alright I will keep it in the 325-350 ball park for a nice crispy skin and spatchcock the chickens on separate racks. Is it really true the upper racks with cook faster than lower racks? I've heard this but would think the opposite with it being further from the heat source.
 
No. All you have to do is cut the backbone out, rub however you like, and throw it on the smoker. There is a layer of fat under the skin that needs to render out in order for the skin to dry and get crispy. In doing so, that rendering fat will keep the meat plenty moist and juicy. Adding liquid to the skin during the cook will do little more than help it stay tough and rubbery.
 
Alright I will keep it in the 325-350 ball park for a nice crispy skin and spatchcock the chickens on separate racks. Is it really true the upper racks with cook faster than lower racks? I've heard this but would think the opposite with it being further from the heat source.

It depends on the smoker. My top rack cooks a little hotter as did my wsm. I'm not experienced with your type of smoker so can't really say. Pay attention and if one rack seems to be cooking faster, swap things around.
 
With a chamber temp of 325-350F, three chickens of the same size, say 5 lbs each, take the same amount of time as one 5 lb chicken.  The chickens don't care if they have company or not.  How much time?  A five pound bird at 325-350F should be done in about 2 hours, maybe a little less, maybe a little more.  Same for three 5 lb birds.  Give yourself three hours just to take away the time pressure. 

Do NOT mop a chicken in the smoker if you want crisp skin.  Let the smoker do its thing and cook the chickens, rendering the fat below the skin. 

If you spatch the chickens, smoke the backbones too.  Wrap them up once they are cool and stick them in the freezer.  They make great soup stock.

Yes, high racks in a smoker can be warmer than lower racks, but usually not more than 15-20F difference. 

Do not use water in the water pan.  If prevents the skin from getting crispy. 

Keep it simple. Brine, dry, rub, smoke.  I do spray my yardbirds lightly with oil before applying the rub, just to make it stick better.  But you need clean smoke before you add the bird.  If you add it too soon, the skin can get black.   

Have fun!
 
Thanks everyone for the recommendations I'm getting the chickens ready now. They've been in the brine for about 8 ours now so I'm about to pull em out and prep them for the smoker. Smoker will be started around the 3:45-4pm mark central time
 
So to run through my first experience smoking chicken just to show everyone how helpful they were I will walk y'all through what I did and how my results came out. 

First thing I did was brine my chickens for 8 hours with a brine that I found on here under a thread titled competition chicken (or something along those lines) This seemed to really help because the chickens seemed to have been quite a bit heavier after the 8 hours from more fluid retention. This seemed like it was going to be great for making juicy birds!

When it came time to finish, I spatchcocked all three birds and used Jack Daniels no 7 chicken rub all over the skin and underneath the skin to give the birds plenty of flavor and to help the wood create a nice color to the bird.

While working with the birds I went ahead and soaked 2 cups worth of applewood chips in hot water for about 30 minutes. I understand some find this to be good practice and some think you should leave them dry but I didn't want to have to open the smoker much during the cook so i pre-soaked them.

Once done I placed them in an 8" cast iron skillet (one of the recommended modifications for my particular smoker) and set it on top of the wood chip tray above the burner. I didn't use any water in my water pan as recommended in this thread, and I lit my smoker and let it reach 350 degrees.

once little I went ahead and got the probes for my thermopro tp08 ran through the back vent so i wouldn't have to later and waited until I got a good clean thin blue smoke as also recommended in this thread. Here is a picture of my smoke when I decided it was time to place the birds in the smoker.


After many said that the top rack cooks the chicken faster I decided that I would put the biggest bird on the top rack and work my way down by weight so the birds went in on the grates skin side up and my meat probe went into the breast of the largest chicken on the top rack. My theory was that if i put the largest bird on the top rack and worked my way down by weight they should all finish up right at the same time. This proved to be accurate this time. I left the smoker closed the entire time of the cook and just monitored my temperatures. after a about an hour and twenty minutes my wood chips were ash for the most part but I still maintained a decent smoke all the way through. at roughly the 2 hour mark my chickens were done.

So I brought my chickens all inside and took temps in the thigh and breast to make sure that they were all done. We immediately cut one chicken and started through it on our plates and had to cut up the second chicken so i only got a picture of one bird but I have to say y'all know what y'all are talking about because this was the best chicken I've ever eaten!!!! It was cooked perfectly all the way through but it was so moist and tender that it would just about melt in your mouth. i kept the temp around 325 for the majority of the cook but did have some random dips in temperature every so often throughout the cooking process the skin probably would have crisped up a little bit better if I would have had the heat just a hair higher and could have maintained it all the way through without those random dips but Honestly it wasn't rubbery at all and was pretty much the perfect texture. I don't think I've ever seen chicken go so fast from our table and I know I haven't ever seen two whole chickens picked apart to just bones in my house. Here is a picture of the finished product!!! Sorry about the skin in the picture I tore it when trying to pull out the meat probe while wearing an oven mit since I didn't have any heat resistant gloves.


Thank y'all so much for giving me such great advice on how to properly smoke multiple chickens at a time. I will forever remember that y'all guided me through my first experience in smoking meat and I can't wait to learn even more from y'all!!! Comment back and let me know what y'all think and also let me know if you see anything I missed so I can try it out next time.
 
Good lookin smoke and great lookin bird! :points:

Glad to hear everything came out good for you. Spatched chickens are pretty simple and a quick cook and you did a heck of a job!!

Lance
 
Good lookin smoke and great lookin bird!
points.gif


Glad to hear everything came out good for you. Spatched chickens are pretty simple and a quick cook and you did a heck of a job!!

Lance
Thanks Lance I am definitely glad y'all replied quickly to my original message. This was way easier than I though it was going to be because of y'all helping to guide me through it. Now I'm looking forward to trying my hand at many more types of meat!
 
What you will find on this forum is a whole lot of really genuine knowledgeable people willing to share their experience and expertise. We all have a love for this and want to share it. BBQ at its core is very simple. Cook meat over a fire. Learn how to manage your fire and how you church it up is ip to you. Patience is the biggest key. Letting the meat do its thing is really all there is to it. I'm looking forward to seeing some of your next smokes.

Lance
 
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That's a good looking bird!! Points!!

Looks like you did an amazing job!! IMO Spatcocked chickens are the perfect way to break in a new smoker, they allow you to get familiar with how the smoker operates.. Looking forward to seeing what you pull off the smoker next.. Good smokes
 
Hi there and welcome!

Congrats on the first successful bird cook with edible skin and all!

I never had much smoked chicken or knew it could be so good.  When I started smoking I figured I would start out with chicken to learn my system and any quirks since chicken was cheap and WOW was I so pleasantly surprised with how good it came out.

You've done well to get edible skin, tackle the "mystery" of the spatchcock, and do a 15 pounds of chicken all in one go.  Chicken is basically, brine, dry, season, smoke at 325F or higher and enjoy.

My adventures into turkey drumbs and thighs have been the same way though I added cure to make those vacuum sealed smoked drums from the grocery store... also known as state fair or Disney world drums.  I hope to do a whole turkey someday in the near future and will treat it the say way as a chicken.

Anyhow enough of my rambling haha. I look forward to seeing what your next posted cook is :)
 
Nice looking bird. Next run, get the Chix in the brine 2 days before the cook. Day 1...Brine over night. Day 2...Next morning, pull the birds and pat dry with paper towel. Place the birds, skin up, in a pan, uncovered and let the skin Dry over night. Day 3... Season and Smoke the birds as above. The 24 hours or so uncovered in the refer lets the skin dry and it will be crispier...JJ
 
Thanks TallBM I plan on trying the turkey drums soon too as I love going to the fair and getting them! I feel I learned a lot from this experience and feel like I'll be able to manage my temp better on the next cook after trying my hand at this chickens. BTW I went with chicken because they are cheap too. If I would have messed up it wouldnt have been as bad as bad on my wallet if I was trying to smoke a brisket haha

Chef JimmyJ I will definitely try that out next time! I was wondering if the skin being so moist was the reason it didnt fully crisp up. I'll probably do chickens again soon to try that recommendation out!
 
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