First timer smoking chicken leg quarters

dpiemo said:

 
Hey everyone,

New to the forum community. I've been around smoking for a while, with some friends and family that smoke, but am doing it solo for my first time next week. I am looking to do chicken leg quarters. From things i've been reading, i wanted to try using apple and pecan woods, with a pretty standard Carolina rub, done low and slow. Was also unsure about brining and wanted to get some pointers on that as well.

Any specific tips or advice for first- timer, and specifically for doing chicken? Will be using a Brinkman, which i have just learned is referred to as the ECB or el cheapo Brinkman!

Thanks in advance for any help

Dan 

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Hi there and welcome Dan!

Here's some quick tips for chicken quarters and chicken in general:

• If you smoke any chicken with the skin on shoot for a temp of 325F or higher.  Under that temp and you are likely to get rubbery/leathery skin.  It's just a temp thing not something you did wrong and the meat will still taste fine if you seasoned under the skin and still got the rubbery skin.
  • If you want to toss the skin and smoke without the skin that works fine as well without brining chicken quarters
• Chicken cooks quick!  So if you are using something like the A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker (AMNPS) to generate smoke you may want to think about doubling up on the smoke for chicken.  If not using an AMNPS just go with whatever smoke your ECB will make for you :)
   
• No need to brine chicken quarters, they are dark meat and will be juicy no matter what
  • If doing whole chicken or chicken breast then I recommend you brine for 2 - 24 hours (I do whole chickens at 24 hrs, and chicken breasts between 2-12 hours depending no how pressed for time I am.  I've even noticed 30 minutes work well for boneless skinless chicken breasts in the oven so I'm positive it will work well for smoking)
  • I do a simple simple simple brine of about 1/3 cup of salt ( I use whatever I have on hand) to about 32-64 floz of water.  That's it just salt and water nothing else in my cause but you can add anything you like.  Why 32-64 floz? Well it depends on whether I'm using a big bowl I have which takes more water or I'm brining in a ziplock bag which takes less water.  It seems to work well either way for me so you have some wiggle room there
• Because chicken cooks so quickly I recommend you use at least 1 stronger wood while smoking so I think your combo of Pecan and Apple will be fine since Pecan is on the stronger side where Apple is on the weaker side.  Blending a weak wood with a strong wood like Hickory or Mesquite will also work but using only a weak wood will not give you so much flavor for the short cooking duration

Well that is about it!

Enjoy the magic of smoked chicken and be amazed at how good it is!

dpiemo said:

 
Thanks for the response!

Just to clarify; you don't think its necessary to brine quarters at all?

Also in regards to the smoke temp., i've been reading to do chicken quarters a little lower, 250-275. I'm wondering if I can get the temp to 325 or higher in the ECB. How long would you expect the cook time to be at each temp (250-275 versus at 325)
 

For the amount of wood, when doing two different woods, does it matter much how much of each you'd have? Will one of these flavors overpower the other?

Thanks again for the tips 

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For clarity, I do not think it is necessary to brine quarters at all.  They should be plenty juicy.  If they were chicken breasts or whole chickens I would suggest that you do brine.

I'm not sure what the max temp is for the ECB.  Just know that if you can't get much over 300F then it is highly likely the chicken skin will be too tough to sensibly eat unless you enjoy leather lol.  

I have never done it a number of people here say that if you leave the chicken uncovered in the fridge for 24 hrs or or over night that the skin will dry out enough to then crisp up.  Others put the chicken with skin under a fan for like an hour or more to dry up the skin so it will crisp up.

Chicken quarters are cheap so feel free to experiment with some that have the skin removed, some where you left them in the fridge overnight/24hrs and others just out of the package.  I would recommend you season a little under the skin on any that may turn out to have leather skin.

Any temp 250-325F I would expect the chicken quarters to probably finish in just under an hour to an hour and a half to the Internal Temp (IT) of 165F.  Chicken cooks quick!

As for wood amounts in general a strong wood will impart more of it's flavor than a weaker wood. So if you have a hickory chunk exactly the same size as an apple chunk well you will taste more hickory than apple since hickory is stronger.

I generally blend the weaker wood at about 30% and usually no more than 50%.  

I think hickory often makes stuff taste too much like bacon so I rarely go over 30% hickory and I love mixing it with 70% apple.

Doing a little math here you would take a chunk of hickory that is the same size as the chunk of apple.

You now have 50% Hickory and 50% Apple assuming that all of the wood will be burned and apply smoke.

From that point you can break up the hickory chunk to be smaller and then add some additional apple chunks to round out the ratio to be 30% Hickory and 70% Apple.

I use pellets and it is easy to for me to measure up my percentages.  With whole wood sticks I would assume that if you burn 3 sticks of equal size that 1 should be hickory and 2 sticks apple for a 33.3% to 66.6% ratio.  You get the picture.

Anyhow feel free to play around any way you like but just remember that chicken cooks fast so plan to get no more than about 1 to 1.5 hours of smoke max in your case unless you are cooking a boat load of quarters.

Best of luck!

Welcome fellow ECB user.. lol

Have fun and be safe!
Johnny B

I just did chicken quarters for 2 hours and some change, then put them over hot coals to crisp the skin and bake on sauce. Worked out well..

I did score the skin in a couple places so it could contract and crisp easier. Also to allow rub in under the skin a bit. Take care. Was 220-235 cooker to internal 160.