Description
This smoked spatchcock chicken is a whole chicken, split open and flattened then smoked to crispy perfection in just 2 hours!
Ingredients
Meat used: 1 whole chicken
Seasoning: Salt, Lowry's Seasoned Salt, Weber Garlic and Herb seasoning
Wood Used: Cherry
Grill Temperature: ~275-325 F, over indirect heat
Meat Temperature: 165 F in breast, 170 F in thigh
Smoke time: ~2 hours
Instructions
- The scary stuff is first 🙂 Before you start, you will want a good pair of kitchen shears, as we are going to be cutting the entire backbone off the chicken (I know this sounds scary but if you have a good pair of kitchen shears it will be no big deal, I promise).
- You want to place the chicken on a cutting board breast side down with the legs pointing towards you. Now just start cutting about a ½ inch away from the backbone on each side which will remove the backbone entirely. Discard the bag chicken innards as well.
- Next, flip the bird over and push down and you will hear some snap, crackle and pop noises, which is breaking that breastbone so your bird lays flat. Boom! Give yourself a pat on the back as you have officially “spatchcocked” a chicken!
- Now we will season our little feathered friend. The first trick is to lightly spray PAM on. Yes, you read this right: PAM. You want just a light layer of oil because just a little will allow our rub to stick but if we use too much it will make the skin mushy. We then want to go a little heavy on the salt as that will help draw out the moisture of the skin, making it crispy. I used a light layer of Lowry's Seasoned Salt, and then a heavy layer of Weber Garlic and Herb seasoning, but you could use your favorite chicken seasonings.
- We want to get our smoker going to at least 275 and no more than 325 degrees. We want it a little hotter than normal to crisp up that skin. You'll have your chicken over indirect heat for this cook. I added cherry wood to my coals which I find is always a good choice for any poultry.
- With the higher temp, we will only have this cooking for about 2 hours, but every bird is different so have your handy instant-read thermometer to check the temps once you hit about an hour and a half. I try to shoot for 170 in the thighs 165 in the breast.
- Once you get those temps, remove it and tent it in foil and let rest for about 15 min to let the juices redistribute.
