Smoked up and drunk Chicken

It's been a great week for me being off of work this week to celebrate my birthday. Some of the wonderful gifts received was a fantastic dinner at Camaje in Greenwich. It is a wonderful French Bistro run by Abigail and to my surprise my wife purchased for me a private lesson with chef Abigail. I'm looking forward to spending time in a formal learning environment with such an established Chef. A wonderful gift from my brother and sister was a Weber portable propane grill and dinner and jazz at blue smoke.

I told myself that I wanted to dedicated this week to getting acquainted with my new smoker. I have to go down the road of making goof ups and bad dishes to get to the point where I know my tool like it was attached to me. With that said I really didn't want to spend loads in the super market so I had to make sure anything I used was something I had on hand freely to use up in my pantry or freezer.

After spending 20 minutes rummaging through my kitchen I came up with the following ingredients:

Hardware:
Smoker
Masonry Jar or Aluminum can

Software"
Whole Chicken
McCormick's Mesquite seasoning
1 Lemon Popsicle
1/4 cup Crown Royal Whiskey
1 oz of Ouzo
1 Clementine
Sprig of Fresh Herbs: Oregano, Thyme, and Rosemary
Mesquite and Hickory chunks

I start by heating up my by firing up the smoker for an good hour with out any of the smoke chips. I needed it to stay a good 210 - 225 Degrees Fahrenheit. It fluctuated a bit so spent some time keeping a good eye on it. As it heated up I took a masonry jar, filled it with the liquids and herbs and seasoned the chicken heavily with the mesquite seasoning. I then saddled the bird on the masonry jar. I must admit my butt flinched a bit as I pulled the drumsticks down on each side. I then placed the clementine over the shoulders and pierced a few wholes into it.

Letting that sit in room temp for an hour as the smoker heats up consistently and the bird warms a bit to room temperature.

Once the smoker is regulated itself i through in Mesquite and Hickory chunks at about a 1 to 3 ratio. I also added a water pan under the bird to catch the dripping and steam the air a bit.

I placed the bird in and waited for about 4 hours maintaining a temperature of about 210 -225 F. I had an internal probe in the bird waiting for it to hit 165 F and several external temperature thermometers to see how accurate each were and the variance in temperature in different parts of the grill.

The bird came out nice and succulent with a good smoky flavor from the woods. I must admit I had some issues figuring out the true temperature as several of my analog gauges were incorrect. I ended up relying on my instant read digital thermometer to lead me to the truth.

It was a good time and I'm looking forward to working my way up to ribs. This week I was able to find a family giving away cherry wood from a downed treed in Tenafly. I'll be making a trip over there to pick up the bounty for future smoking. Stay posted. =)