S-s-s-SMOKIN'!!

Today, I fell in love with yet another method of cooking.

For Christmas, this year, I got a Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker.  Today, I used it for the first time.  I cooked two chickens.

BEST. CHICKEN. EVER.

No, SERIOUSLY.

Seriously.

Costco sells chickens for 99 cents per pound.  I bought a pair of 5 lb chickens last week in anticipation of being able to smoke them on my Christmas present.  You're probably wondering how I knew I was getting the Smokey Mountain Cooker for Christmas.  Well, it's rather hard to hide.  It's more than 3 feet tall an almost 2 feet in diameter.  Not to mention the fact that I ordered it myself.  :D

Last night, after waffling for a while on exactly how I was going to prepare the chickens for smoking, I finally decided to brine them instead of marinating them.  I removed the backbones and keel bones from the chickens and cut them into halves.  I put them in a brine mixture of water, salt, and brown sugar, and let them brine overnight.

This morning, I took them out of the brine and put them on a sheet pan in the refrigerator to let the skin air dry for a few hours.  Then it was time to decide what kind of a rub I wanted to put on the outside of the chickens.  I decided to use a basic bird rub recipe I found in a barbecue cookbook.  This meant a trip to the grocery store to get some dried chilies.  After seeding, toasting, and grinding up the chilies, I made the rub--a mixture of the fresh-made chili powder, cumin, curry powder, salt, and pepper.

While the charcoal was getting ready, I applied the rub to the chicken halves.  After placing some apple wood chunks on the top of the charcoal, I finished assembling the cooker and put the chicken on the grate.

A few minutes later, I went back outside to check on the smoker temperature.  It was smoking away within the perfect smoking temperature range and the apple wood was smelling sweet and delicious.  After an hour, I flipped the chicken over, and after another half hour, I put my thermometer probe in one of the chicken breasts.

The breasts still needed to rise another ten degrees before it was safe to eat.  20 minutes later, the temperature had only come up another degree.  It was taking longer than I thought it would, probably because the chickens were bigger than those called for in most recipes I had seen.  Since we wanted to eat at a decent hour, I pulled the chickens out of the smoker and put them in a 400 degree oven to bring them up to temperature.

And wow.  WOW!  Amazing.

Chicken really takes on the smoke flavor.  The combination of the sweet apple smoke and the spicy rub is amazing.  Amazing, I say!  The bright pink smoke ring looked great and the smoky flavor had penetrated the chicken all the way through.  It didn't really taste like chicken any more.  The chicken had been transformed into something entirely new.

The kitchen has a lingering sweet, smoky aroma and there are a few leftovers in the fridge that will disappear quickly tomorrow.

I'm hooked.  I can't wait to try smoking a turkey, a brisket, some ribs, a pork butt...

*happy sigh*