Chicken is too smokey

[chef jimmyj]

Straight out of the bottle it is Vinegary and similar to a Carolina Mop but the finished Chicken has just a bit of Tang without the real strong Vinegar flavor. You can always add more sugar but watch your temps. Getting the sauce too hot with the extra sugar can burn the bird...JJ

 

[floyd]

Your basting recipe is REAL close to my Eastern NC BBQ sauce we use for pork and chicks. I plan to try it this weekend. Thanks for the motivating threads.

 

[cliffcarter]

 
I was just reading Jeff's recipe for beer can chicken which sounds delicious. However, when I have cooked beer can chicken or chicken wings they taste so smokey that is ruins the poultry. I am using pecan wood at 225 in a side smoker called the Old Country BBQ Pits Pecos Coal Smoker. (I know side smokers aren't the best but I am stuck with this one for a while).

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I leave it fully vented so the smoke isn't trapped in there and wait until some smoke burns off the initial log before putting the chicken on. I even tried wrapping the beer can chicken in a cape of tin foil after an hour.

Thanks!

Chris

I'm really surprised to hear that it's too smokey, I use the Old Country Wranger and I find that most of the time the stuff I cook isn't smokey enough for me. You could always bump up the heat so it cooks quicker and isn't in the smoke as long. Also make sure you are burning a clean fire with thin blue smoke the whole time.

Also if you keep your next log on top of the firebox to heat up, it will ignite faster and you will have less white smoke. It just takes practice to get a good clean fire. There isn't much benefit to smoking chicken at a lower temp, plus a higer temp yields crispy skin.

Cooking with wood and trying to maintain a very low temp in the cooking chamber is why your chicken is too smoky. By trying to keep your temp too low you restricted air flow to the fire which makes the wood smolder and produce more smoke. If you are going to cook with wood only you must keep a small, hot, clean burning fire. If you do you will not over smoke your meat. There is no sense in limiting your self to low temperatures when BBQing chicken or any meat, next time take the temp up to the 300°-325° range, you'll be done faster, the chicken will not be too smoky to eat and you'll crisp, delicious skin.

 

[gary s]

Chicken is definitely one meat you can over smoke pretty easy. I can't tell you how many times I have eaten Chicken out at different BBQ joints and It would be over smoked you get that strong and little bitter taste. I learned this myself from over 35 years of BBQing.  I usually cook chickens when I am cooking other stuff. Since Chicken cooks pretty quick I wait till pretty close to the end to put them on. I rub my chickens with EVOO and my Rub, put them on the smoker and check my fire and stack to see how it's burning. I will add a small piece of wood (usually pecan)

That way it will smoke just for a little while and go back to the thin blue smoke or just heat coming out of the stack. I will spritz them a few times with apple juice or 50/50 apple juice and apple cider vinegar Smoke at 225. They come off with a deep deep golden brown almost mahogany in color and a mild smoky flavor..

Gary

 

[redwood carlos]

I'm really surprised to hear that it's too smokey, I use the Old Country Wranger and I find that most of the time the stuff I cook isn't smokey enough for me. You could always bump up the heat so it cooks quicker and isn't in the smoke as long. Also make sure you are burning a clean fire with thin blue smoke the whole time.

This is my advice as well.

 

[bama bbq]

There was an old black guy that set up a corrugated steel pit in the parking lot of a beer distributor. Metal milk crates made the base and held a bag of lit Charcoal Briquettes with the corrugated just wired together to form a box and a sheet of expanded metal for a cooking grate. He put the chicken halves on and just kept turning them and drenching the birds with a Vinegar based sauce out of a gallon jug with some holes drilled in the cap. Was the best chicken I had ever eaten.

That reminds me of the best chicken I ever had. It was on the North Shore of Oahu. This guy had a bed of coals in a 16' trailer and sprockets rigged up on the end of spits, a bicycle chain, and an elec motor. He had a mop and a tub of sauce he was hittin those chickens with as they turned. His wife would pop those birds three or four times with a meat clever and serve it in a styrofoam box. We ate that chicken on the hood of the car with our fingers at his roadside stand. Man, I can taste it now!

To the original post: I like to think of smoke wood as a strong spice. A little goes a long way.

 

[gary s]

Another thing, different types of wood are stronger and harsher than others and can impart a strong smoke taste. Mesquite is one you have to be carful with or you will defiantly have a strong smoke taste. Also I make sure my wood is well seasoned. Green wood and seasoned wood will leave different levels of smokiness. I find seasoned wood is a lot milder.

Gary

 

[pigbark]

That reminds me of the best chicken I ever had. It was on the North Shore of Oahu. This guy had a bed of coals in a 16' trailer and sprockets rigged up on the end of spits, a bicycle chain, and an elec motor. He had a mop and a tub of sauce he was hittin those chickens with as they turned. His wife would pop those birds three or four times with a meat clever and serve it in a styrofoam box. We ate that chicken on the hood of the car with our fingers at his roadside stand. Man, I can taste it now!

To the original post: I like to think of smoke wood as a strong spice. A little goes a long way.

I think that guy was on TV not long ago,, by the time they got to the other end of the trailer they were done... that chain drive ran them like a rotisserie rite?