chicken in the wsm, how long?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

TheCook

Senior Cook
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
452
Location
Longview, TX
Hey guys,

I have two 3.5 lb butterflied chickens in the WSM. Seems like the WSM topped out at 300F. How long do you think it would take to cook them at that temp?

If I want to raise the temp, do I add more lit or unlit charoal?

Right now I have a one whole lit weber chimney with 2 apple chunks and a cherry chunk. All vents are 100% open.

Thanks.
 
At 300* the chickens depending on size should take about an hour and a half. 300* in my opinion is hot enough, but if you want it hotter, yes, add more lit charcoal.
 
Thanks Larry. They're both about 3.5 lbs each. I figured 325-350 a better temp. But you're the man, and if you say 300, I'll take your word for it.
 
Sounds like you be a candidate for whut is sometimes called Smo-fried chicken. Know a couple of old derelict comp bbq types who supposedly partied too hardy on Friday night and awoke with a bad old hangover and not much time to deliver the chicken to the tent on Sat morn. One fella was trying to smoke it whilst the other fella fired up the turkey fryer from where they had been frying turkeys on Friday. They took that slightly smoked chicken down in to the hot grease and wound up hitting 1st Place or so the rumor goes. Now that will give crispy skin. Know a fella who made a life's work of perfecting the phenomenon.

bigwheel
 
hour and a half wasnt long enough....oops! the leg bones did wiggle enough, or so i thought. Split the chicken in half down the breast bone and the juices werent clear. So in the oven they go for a little bit. They sure look good though!
 
I learned about smoked-fried chicken from Bobby Seale. Yes, that Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Bobby Seale. Seems his "Moms" made it, and it was his favorite dish growing up. IIRC, he said she called it "Bobby Q" because he liked it so much. That's pretty childish, and since he's older than me that would date the dish into the fifties at the latest.

So, "smo-fried" was around long before barbecue comps.

I don't mean to name drop and imply we were tight or that I was some big-deal radical. Not that there's much political cachet in a forum where Francisco Franco is considered left of center.

Here's how it happened. I met Seale once, just to shake hands and smoke a doob, in the late sixties, when he came visited someone staying staying with a friend of a friend in Santa Cruz. A few years later we recognized one another at a family reunion to which he was distantly related, and which I helped Willie Walker cater in Oakland. Must have been around '74. After clean up, he broke out the herb, we started talking about food, and he told me about Moms' smoked-fried chicken.

A close approximation of what he said would be, "Soak it in some seasoned buttermilk. Barbeque it like you do, but only to half done. Back in the buttermilk just to get it wet, and bread it like you do. Fry it in a skillet, just hot enough to bubble. Cook it to about mahogany." He also told me I reminded him of the Bobby Womack song, "Hairy Hippie." The chicken was was damn good, and I've been doing it off and on ever since. The song's not bad either.

I know Bobby Seale wrote about it in his book, "Barbecue'N with Bobby Seale," published in 1988. I don't have a copy, but one of those derelicts probably does. Just sayin' is all.

Oh yeah, since the chicken is butterflied and cooks like halves, I'd figure on about 1-1/4 hours at 300 and check it at 1 hour. No liquid in the pan. IMO 300 is about as low as you can go and still get good skin, but much hotter than 325 and the bird won't take smoke right. In those kinds of cookers where you've got good control -- like a WSM -- it's not a bad idea to start a little under 300, get some good smoke into it, then crank to finish the skin. Give it 45 minutes at 275, then another 20 minutes or so at 350.

Rich
 
Back
Top Bottom