Spatchcock Chicken

Smoking chicken is very simple to do and is sure to be a hit at any bbq. The chicken turns out incredibly tender and juicy and has an amazing smoky flavor you are going to love.

This is one of my favorite recipes because you can use the leftover chicken for so many different things. A lot of times I will cook 2 of these at once. One will be to have for a meal and one will be just to save for meals throughout the week. I say this recipe is very simple but there is a catch if you like eating the skin with the chicken. You almost can’t go wrong getting the meat to turn out just the way you want it. The hardest part for me when I first started making smoked chicken was to get the skin nice and crispy. If it is not cooked the right way the skin can turn out very rubbery and that is really the last thing you want since that is the part of the meat that will have the rub on it. This took me some trial and error to get right. I will go over some tricks I use to help ensure the skin turns out the way you want it.

Cooking Basics

Once you get the chicken on the smoker, you are pretty much just bringing it up to temp to finish the cooking. There is a little bit of prep to this recipe. As the recipe title mentions, we will be spatchcocking the chicken to cook it. This has several advantage over cooking the chicken whole. When you spatchcock a chicken, you are basically splitting it open by removing the spine and flattening it out. This helps the skin get crispier while cooking and reduces the cooking time while also allowing for more even cooking of the bird. Another advantage I have noticed is that it is much easier to apply seasoning to since you only need to deal with one side of the bird after it is spatchcocked. What you will need for this process is meat shears. I have included a link at the bottom for anyone who does not have a pair. Using the meat shears, you will need to simply cut along each side of the spine of the chicken and then remove it completely as shown below.

Once this is done, you will need to flip over the bird. At this point, it will still not lay down nicely. You will need to put the palm of your hand on the top part of the chicken where it is not flattened and push down to crack the rib bone. Once this is done the bird should lay out nicely and you can start putting the rub on and getting it ready for the smoker.

The first tip for helping to get nice crisy skin is to make sure that the skin is dry before you add the rub. You will want to take a paper towel and dry off all of the skin on the bird, lifting up drumsticks and wings to get underneath as well. The drier the skin starting out the better result you will have when the chicken is done. Once this is done, I like to put a little bit of oil on the chicken and then apply a rub all over the top. I like using the Pit Boss Sweet Heat Rub but feel free to substitute with whatever rub you prefer. Once these steps are complete, you are ready to fire up the pit.

Final Thoughts

• Crispy Skin - As I mentioned above the toughest part of this recipe is getting the skin to turn out crispy. Below are a few additional tricks I use to try to ensure it turns out the way we want.

• Butter spray - Every half hour or so take some kind of butter spray like Parkay and spritz the skin while it is cooking. You need to make sure you use real butter. I did an experiment trying to make it a little healthier and used I Can’t Believe Its Not Butter and that did not work nearly as well as the real thing.
• Higher Cooking Temp - Most smoking recipes use the low and slow method of cooking but with chicken, it’s ok to go a little higher in heat. This will help you get the result you are trying to achieve with the skin.
• Finish with High Heat - For the last bit of the cook, you should crank up the heat to 400. This will ensure that you have some crispiness in that layer of skin.
• Last Resort - Using these tips should help ensure you get crispy skin on your bird when cooking, but if somehow at the end of cooking you are still dealing with rubbery chicken, you can either throw it on direct heat skin down for a couple minutes or throw it under a broiler in the oven for a couple minutes. Personally I prefer direct heat on the grill. For some reason, I have an issue with throwing something in the oven after you have spent the time to cook it on a grill but that’s just personal preference.

• More flavor - The flavor of the chicken is wonderful because of the smoky flavor it gets but you will get none of the seasoning flavor in the meat because that will all be on the skin. If you would like to get some flavor into the chicken itself what you can do is pull the skin away from the meat and season underneath the skin before cooking as an alternative way to prepare the bird. This will get most of the breast meat. Another way is to use an injection. I will go over this optiion in a future post for anyone who is interested.

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