Payne County Rust Smoke-Roasting Whole Chickens

Decades ago, the country families of the Midwest made their staple diet of beef. From day to day, beef was used for at least two meals a day, and the special days were given to fowl. Be it prairie chicken, the occasional goose or duck or the domestic chicken. Nowadays the rule is reversed and chicken is enjoyed on a much larger scale, regrettably to the cattleman, but there are many ways to enjoy this fine meat using a smoker. Today we’ll walk through roasting a whole fryer on the smoker.

First, this is for smoke-roasting a bird which is going to use a higher heat for a shorter time than a traditional smoked chicken. The skin's a little crispier and the bird doesn't have as much smoke flavor deep in the meat. Also, I generally just use charcoal for this type of preparation.

Now a little about the bird: Chicken can be purchased in a number of different cuts, and even comes in more than one variety as a whole carcass. Basically whole birds come as fryers—often called broilers—and roasters. Fryers are young birds that are generally slaughtered at or near 60 days from hatching. They generally weigh around 4-5 lbs and are very inexpensive. Roasters are much larger birds that are mature birds when they’re slaughtered. I prefer fryers due to their tenderness and consistency and here we’ll be roasting two fryers.

Many people love the flavor of beer-can-chicken, a fad that has gone crazy lately and led to the invention of many a device designed to hold the half-empty beer can upright while the chicken sits down over it. The steam and flavor of the beverage cooks the birds from the inside imparting its flavor in the bird. Others prefer to dry rub the chicken and/or inject the fowl with a marinade and a large syringe. Still others brine their bird in a mixture of vinegar, spices and water claiming that it adds flavor to the end product. When smoke-roasting chickens I’m a big fan of the dry rub and injection marinades, ergo the following:

First, get your marinade ready. I use the following recipe for the marinade:

Injection marinade: 1c olive oil, 1c water, 1T ground red pepper, 1T ground black pepper, 1T paprika, 1T garlic salt

Mix the above, stir like mad to form a dark red sauce and set it to the side. The sauce will have to be stirred again between syringe-fillings to float the suspensions. Next I prepare the bird; chicken is nice because the skin separates from the meat rather easily by sliding your fingers between the meat cuts and the skin. This forms a nice little station for rust depositing! Rub a liberal amount of Rust Rub* onto the breast meat, and drum sticks.

*Rust Rub=1part Payne County Rust : 2parts Brown Sugar

The next part, trussing, is optional. I rarely truss the birds, but here's the how-to if you're interested: A true trussing can serve to keep the bird looking very nice and uniform, but tends to hide the heat of the smoker from the inner thigh muscle, hence we have uneven cooking. Bad stuff. I simply tie the tail up to the two drumstick ends, then cross the string around the back of the bird and bind the two wings together to dam up the juices that like to carry fat and spice out of the bird during cooking. Here's a step-by-step:

Now for the injection--I just use an ordinary marinade syringe that I bought at Wal-Mart. Fill the syringe and inject liberal amounts of the marinade into the breast, thighs, drumsticks and the body cavity itself.

Now we wait. I like to stick the birds in the fridge in Ziploc bags and let them sit there over night.

The next day I fire up the coals just like always, but this time I'll be using no wood at all. I prefer to let the natural flavors of the whole bird be the prominent feature in this dish. The bones and residual carcass of the fryer lend a lot of good flavor. From here on out, it's as easy as lighting up a good bed of charcoal, setting the birds in the smoker breast-side up directly under the thermometer and cooking at 350F. Be sure to brush on a liberal coat of olive oil onto all the skin of the bird. This will make the skin crispy and wonderful. If this is skipped, I find that the skin becomes too chewy to deal with.

About an hour and 45 minutes later, check the deepest portion of the thigh muscle with a probe thermometer. We're looking for around 180 degrees. If all is right with the world, the birds should be ready to make a trip inside and sit on the counter for about twenty minutes--if you can wait.

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