Stovetop Whisky Soaked Oak Smoked Chicken

Whiskey Soaked Oak Smoked Chicken

Yay! For the four day Easter holiday, boooo for it going so fast. Hooray for the wonderful food eaten though, for after a few weeks of no cooking I was back in the kitchen and ready to create all sorts of yum.

We hot smoke a lot of food here, our Cameron's smoker has seen a lot of use. We'd never smoked a whole chicken though so we set about rectifying that this weekend, couldn't be easier and it created the base of several meals throughout the long weekend.

On Thursday morning we bought the chicken and brined it that afternoon. A simple brine of just 1/4 cup of sea salt and 1/4 cup of sugar in 2.4 litres of water. 

Simples

I separated the skin from the meat by sliding my fingers underneath and gently severing any connections. Then I put the chicken into the brine and into the fridge it went for 24 hours.

Not sure why we don't have photos of these steps but I must have forgotten to take any.

You have to make a tin foil tent for the smoker because the chicken is way too big for the lid to fit but it's really easy, you just connect two pieces of foil by folding the adjoining edges a couple of times to make the middle top part of the tent and then you cover the smoker and seal the foil sheet around the edges.

I hope that made sense without photos.

We used a 3.33lb chicken which took 1 1/2 hours on a medium heat.

Let the chicken cool and ideally - if you can possibly restrain yourself (we couldn't to begin with) - pop into the fridge overnight for the full smokey flavour to develop. 

You can do all sorts with the chicken once the flavour has developed, we had ours with the wonderful - currently in season - Jersey Fries, in toasted sandwiches, and in DS Gluten Free White Rolls (which I guest blogged about here). 

The Glutenite Did That, I Always Put The Lettuce At The Bottom. Ahem.

I also just picked at the smoked chicken as I felt like it, carve and munch. I'm a big fan of picky foods.

We don't home smoke enough food in this country, it's so simple and once you have your smoker all you need is to buy foodstuffs to flavor and your choice of wood chips once in a while (they last ages). It's a lovely way to cook and I wish more people over here knew of the wonders of doing so.

We also have cold smoking apparatus but that's a little more complicated when you don't have an outside area to use it. I'm aspiring to cold smoking, and growing vegetables *nods*. I really don't belong in a city.

This Easter I didn't get any eggs, not one, well, unless you count Kitty Campbell ones. In a way I'm glad as I have been on a diet (that's gone very wrong since The Glutenite got back), but it kind of makes me feel old. 

I must rectify this with some silliness immediately.

More tomorrow...