Smoked Chicken Wings Update

I cooked the smoked chicken wings again last Sunday and wanted to update you on a little observation I made. I had too many wings to fit into two aluminum pans, so I put a half a dozen or so directly on the grate. Those half a dozen ended up even better than the original. Yes they made a little mess in the smoker, but it was totally worth it. I think the biggest difference was that it took up a bit more smoke and, more importantly, none of the rub came off the wings when the fat rendered out of them. I'm going to do these again soon and I'll give you another update with pics. I doubt I'll ever use the pans again.

Chicken Halves With White BBQ Sauce

Well, I meant to have this and another post up late last week, but had some technical difficulties with my laptop where I had these pics stored. Better late than never, I guess.

I really like doing chicken indirectly on the kettle. Sometimes I like to do a white BBQ sauce with this chicken. A lot of folks haven't heard of white BBQ sauce, but it hails from Decatur, Alabama at Bib Bob Gibson's BBQ. I haven't had the pleasure of eating there, but it's on my to do list. Their family recipe is all over the internet, but I used a simple version that I actually like a little better. I need to make theirs again sometime and reduce the amount of lemon. Anyway here is my very simple white sauce recipe:

• mayonaisse
• apple cider vinegar
• Add enough vinegar to cut the mayo. The sauce should just coat the back of a spoon
• cracked black pepper (to taste)
• cayenne pepper (to taste)

As you can see, this is a very simple recipe, but the family really likes it. Here is a pic of the sauce and the bird.



I understand that at Bib Bob's they dunk the chicken in a 5 gallon bucket of sauce. I obviously don't make that much at one time. I just spoon it over the chicken as I eat it. This way your guests can control the amount of sauce they use as well.

Smoked Chicken Wings

I did quite a bit of cooking over the weekend so I'll have a few things to share this week. First up is the appetizer for Saturday's cook. I've been wanting to do some chicken wings for a while. I was trying to think up a recipe when I saw this post at Jason's BBQ Blog. His wings looked fantastic, so I thought I would give them a try. I had to deviate from his recipe some so I'll post what I did here.

The rub:

• 1 part kosher salt.
• 2 parts turbinado sugar
  
• Jason used yellow sugar...I'm going to show my ignorance and say that I don't know what that is.
• 1 part paprika
• 1 part garlic powder
• 1 part onion powder
• 1 part dry mustard
  
• Jason used ground black mustard...again, not sure what that is.
  
• ½ part coriander
  
• Jason used cardomom, but it was outragously expensive, so I substitued.
  

The sauce:

• 2 cups smoked tomato halves
• Two good sized tomatos, smoked on the Chargriller for about an hour at 250ish. I don't think I smoked them as long as Jason did.
  
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup dried dates.
  
• Jason used fresh dates (I think), but I could find any.
  
• 1 clove garlic smashed
• 1 large red onion, quartered.
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 juice from ½ of a lemon
• ½ tablespoon rosemary
• ½ tablespoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon coriander
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne

Put all of the sauce ingredients into a blender or food processor and liquify it.

I sprinkled the rub very liberally over the wings and let them sit for 15 or 20 minutes. Jason used a BBQ wok for his wings but I used a couple disposable aluminum pans. I put one layer of wings per pan and smoked for a total of about 2 hours or so. You can rip one open when you think it's close and take a look to make sure they are done. The fat really came out of the wings, so I drained the fat twice during the cook. Like Jason, I put the sauce on about a half an hour before the cook was over.

The sauce ended up kind of gooey, so I fired up the kettle and charred up the outside of about half the wings....you could see them on the left of the pic. The ones that I put on the kettle definitely had a slightly different taste, but they were equally good. These wings will definitely be made many more times. They were fantastic.


Update: make sure you check out my update on this recipe in a more recent post.

Citrus-Brined Boneless Chicken Breasts

Well, I decided to break away from Tarantino's cookbook a little on my next brining recipe. The results were mixed. Overall the chicken was good, but it was a little salty and not quite citrusy enough. I'll tell you what I did, then at the end I'll tell you what I plan to do to fix it.


The ingredients

• Two quarts of water
• 1/2 cup of kosher salt
• The zest and juice of two oranges, two lemons, and two limes. These made about a cup and a half of juice
• 1/4 cup of light brown sugar
• 3 spring onions (including greens)
• handfull of cilantro
  

I forgot the salt until after I took the pic

This is a handy little zester that I stole from my wife. Only make one pass over the fruit. You want the oil out of the skin, not the white stuff underneath.

You can see that this made a lot of brine for the 6 big chicken breasts that I brined. You can cut the recipe or save some of it for later if you don't need it all. Bring the brine to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Cool to room temp, then move to the fridge and cool to 40 deg. I brined these breasts for about 5 and a half hours.


Set up your grill for direct cooking. For boneless breasts I usually put one thick layer of coals so I can cook em' hot and fast. After reading a post on The Smoke Ring I was worried about them being too salty, so I rinsed them, patted them dry, and added some fresh cracked pepper before putting them on the grill.


The finished product!! Like I said, they were good, but not great. They were a little two salty and the other ingredients didn't come thru as well as the other brines I have tried. They were extremely juicy. The texture was good, so I don't think I grossly over brined them.



The fix-- I'm going to try this again because I really like the flavors attached and I think they will work great for boneless chicken. Next time I'm going to add one each of the fruits and I'm going to double the onion, cilantro, and brown sugar. I'm also going to run all of the solid ingredients thru the food processor similar to the other chicken brine I used to release all those flavors better. Then I'm going to brine them a maximum of 3 hours to cut down on the saltiness. I'll let you know how it works.

I'm beginning to like this brining thing: Brined Chicken Halves

The maple bourbon pork chops were such a success I decided to try some brined chicken. This brine recipe also came from "Marinades, Rubs, Brines, Cures, and Glazes" by Jim Tarantino. I cooked them over indirect heat in the kettle like I always do.


The Ingredients


-2 quarts water
-1 cup chopped sweet onion
-6 cloves of garlic
-1/2 cup kosher salt
-1/2 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
-1 tbsp thyme
-1 tbsp chopped rosemary
-1/4 cup fresh ground black pepper
-1 tsp paprika
-1 tsp cumin seeds
-3 bay leaves

For this recipe put the onion, garlic, and a cup of water into a blender or food processor and blend it until you've got a uniform texture (almost liquid). Add that to the rest of the water and ingredients and boil the entire mixture, then simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. Cool to room temp then put it in the fridge to 40 degrees. Add the chicken and brine it for 8 to 10 hours.

For this I bought a whole chicken. I buy a lot of whole chickens because they are so cheap (This one was 4 bucks, I think). I guess a lot of folks don't know what to do with a whole chicken, so the grocery stores and butchers cut them up for you and charge a premium. Anyway, if you've never cut up a chicken, or anything else for that matter, just buy one and hack away at it. You're not gonna hurt it....it's already dead!!

I halved the chicken for two reasons: 1) I prefer to cook chicken halves over indirect heat (or sometimes smoked) as opposed to beer-butt chicken...this is just personal preference, and 2) It was easier to brine them in a shallow container. If you'd rather do brined beer-butt chicken, go for it. I'm sure it'll be great. Halving the chicken is easy to do with just a good pair of kitchen shears. Just cut out the backbone, then one cut on the other side to separate the breasts.


Set up your grill for indirect grilling. I used hickory again. Be careful with the wood. The chicken skin really takes in the smoke. I make sure my wood chunks are burning nicely before I cover the Kettle. Right before you're ready to cook, dab the brining solution off of the chicken with paper towels. I then put a light coating of peanut oil on the skin and sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper.


The Finished Product!! I've cooked a lot of chickens this way in the past, without the brine, and they have turned out fantastic. However, this chicken was probably the juiciest I've ever cooked and the skin was some of the best I've done, too...bite thru crunchy. I'm not sure if the skin was a direct result of the brine or not, because I've gotten crunchy skin in the past, but not consistently. Some investigation is in order......




I'm heading to beautiful Des Moines, Iowa bright and early in the morning on business for a few days. I'll be online some, but it'll be late in the week before I'm able to post anything. Have a great week!!

What is BBQ?

Growing up in rural North Carolina, BBQ to me was one thing: pork. It may have been from slow roasted shoulders or from a whole hog, but it was pork. It may have been pulled or chopped, but it was pork. It also had a vinegar-based sauce on it, but that's a whole other discussion. Now, BBQ to me is anything that is slow-cooked with real smoke. It could be a pork butt, a whole pork shoulder, a whole hog, a brisket, chickens of any persuasion...hell, even a fatty and atomic buffalo turds (ABTs) qualify...sorta. As long as it is slow-cooked using real smoke, it counts as BBQ to me. On a side note, if you don't know what a fatty or ABTs are, stick around, I'll post on them eventually.

Lots of folks will disagree with me on this, but that is the way I see it. Shoot, we can't even agree as to how to spell BBQ....barbeque, barbecue, Bar-B-Que, BBQ, etc. You know, some folks say they are cooking insert any meat here on the barbecue (barbie for our down-under friends) this weekend....or, let's have a barbecue this weekend. You won't here me using the term "BBQ" in that way, but to each his own. I don't let the semantics bother me much. I will spend an equal amount of time on this blog talking about grilling recipes, techniques, etc. that don't qualify as BBQ in my book. I've been trying some new (new to me anyway) things on the ol' Weber Kettle lately that I'll be posting up in the weeks to come.

So, in short, if it's cooked slowly with real smoke I call it BBQ. But if it is cooked outside using charcoal and/or wood, I'm all for it, whether I call it BBQ or not.