Open Faced Smoked Chicken

Well, it has been another week on the road and another week missing cooking on the egg (I missed my family as well...for the record). So, despite seemingly perpetual rain,I was cooking tonight.

If you could not tell already from this blog, I am not a complicated eater. I like the simple things. What I especially like though is to find a wide variety of ways to cook my favorites so they do not get old. I am sure over time (and with the help of lots of beer) I will experiment and try many new things...but for tonight, I needed comfort food.

So, I decided I would cook a whole chicken and then pull & chop the meat and have some open face BBQ chicken sandwhiches. To start, I prepped the chicken for a cook "beer can style". This is a pretty easy and quick way to smoke a bird. I rubbed the chicken down, in and out, with John Henry's Pecan rub and then cooked it for approx 2.5 hours at 250 degrees. I used a combination of pecan chuncks and apple chips for the smoke.

When the chicken reached 170 degrees in the breast it was done to my liking. I then carved the meat, and with a little of the skin, chopped it all up on a platter.

Served on buns with a little Sticky Fingers Habanero Hot BBQ sauce (out of my normal Suck Creek Wings Spicy BBQ), combined with some roasted potatoes and baked beans.....it hit the spot!



I think the next variation of the norm will be some good ol fashion BBQ chicken that I was drooling over today on www.thesmokering.com. Split whole chickens and chicken thighs smothered in spicy BBQ sauce does sound good!