The best part is the leftovers can be used for anything from smoked chicken enchiladas to smoked chicken lasagna… you name it.

Long story short here, there are tons of recipes for smoked chicken and I will post some of them I have used. In the end, however, I feel that butterflying the chicken serves many purposes that benefit the cook. The bird cooks more quickly, it allows easier access for injecting and seasoning to all areas of the bird and it makes the cutting / pulling process after cook MUCH easier, since all the sections are nicely laid out as you’ll see below.

For this cook, I started with 2 whole birds from Bag n Save in Omaha. I placed them in foil pans because I hate messes and even more..I hate clean up.  This allows me to toss the pans when I’m done.  They are your basic Tyson whole chicken come just like this:

From here, you’ll need to open up the chickens from the package and wash them as much as you can at this point.  It might be slightly frozen still…which is OK.  Just run some cool water to wash and it will begin to soften up for handling.  You’ll want to place the chicken wings up with the legs pointed right at your belly.

Once you have it situated, you will remove the backbone.  Start by cutting with some kitchen shears as close to the backbone as possible so you don’t waste too much meat and cut all the way down to the neck.  You can see how I started this here:

Continue cutting down the backbone and then repeat on the other side.  Once you have both cuts complete, you can start to pull away the chicken halves and remove the backbone completely.  It’s nice to get this out as it’s a tough bone to work around when pulling / slicing and really only holds trivial, low quality meat anyway.

Now pull the backbone out and set it aside, like so:

Now is the time to clean out all the guts and other material that looks nasty out of here.  You can see….this doesn’t look very tasty:

At this point, we want to start getting the bird flattened out so it sits nicely on the smoker or grill.  Simply grab both sides of the bird and pull them apart gently until you feel the breast bone begin to break….just enough to get it opened up nice and wide.  After we wash it – we’ll flatten it out from the top side.  Once you have it opened up – run the entire bird under cold water using your hands and fingers to clean out all the guts and odd looking pieces as well as any “spur” type feeling material that’s in here.  This is the best time to get all this out of here and will make your finishing steps much easier so you don’t have to pick through it later.  Don’t hesitate to use a knife or scissors during this process.  Whatever you need.

Once it’s all washed up, check it out.  It should look like this:

Now you are set to make it sit flat and pretty up the way you want it to lay in the smoker.  I like to have mine skin side up…so I finagle it until I have the positioning I like in the smoker…just to make sure it’ll go that way once it’s seasoned up and ready to cook.  You want to keep the wings and legs tucked in as much as possible, while also allowing for as much of the skin and meat to get hit with smoke.  It’s a fine balance between keeping in moisture and giving it smoke.

Flattened out, it should look like this:

Now you’re all set!!  Season that bad boy up, inject it, whatever you want to do to it to make it delicious.

Like I said – I like mine skin side up while smoking so I put it in the smoker and leave it alone the entire cook..just as you see it directly above.  This allows for the most smoke to hit the meat and allows for the skin to get a nice color and all those seasonings you put on top to run into the meat…as well as the fat from the skin…which will break down during the cooking process.

Good luck – hope this helps!

First, I purchased two (2) family packs of Tyson chicken thighs from my local Bag N Save grocery store.  I laid them all out on the counter and trimmed and prepped them as normal, cutting off all the excess skin, fat and weird bones and veins and stuff like that.  Basically, anything I wouldn’t want to eat.

I then marinaded the chicken for 2 hours in my normal chicken marinade in a 1 gallon zipper bag.

It consists of:

• 1 Cup Buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons of Ranch Dressing Mix
• 4 tablespoons of the Spicy BBQ Chicken Rub (I always use the rub I plan to use for the chicken for this ingredient)

After the marinade, I preheated the oven to 350 and removed the chicken thighs from the bag, letting all the excess drip back into the bag and placed them skin down in a large foil roaster pan.

I generously coated the meat side of the thighs with the Spicy BBQ Chicken Rub and patted them down.

Then, the thighs were flipped over to skin side up.

Here’s the new technique I’m trying:
Generously coat the skin of each thigh with Real Kraft Mayo, leaving a nice solid Mayo base.  Then coat the tops of the thighs with the rub, pat it in with your hands and wrap the skin around the sides of the thigh (using the bone as the center line) for nice little packages.  Here’s what they looked like in the pan before cooking:

To try to make up for not cooking in the smoker, I placed a smaller roasting pan in the oven with about 3/4″ of water and 20 or so drops of liquid smoke.

I cooked the thighs for 30 minutes at this temperature and this is what they looked like after that time.  You can see that the Mayo actually does appear to be doing something WONDERFUL to the skin.  They look great!!!  Oddly enough…they also look “smoked”…..

After the first 30 minutes, I lowered the temp to 225 and let some of the heat out of the oven to take it down to that temp more quickly, with the intention of cooking them from somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 more hours at this temp.

Here’s the progress after another 60 mintues (90 total):

Again, I decided to take a quick look at the thighs, to see how progress is going.  They have now been cooking for 2.5 hrs total, the first 30 at 350 degrees and the last 2 hrs at 225.  I stuck a quick read thermo in the biggest thigh and it’s right at 173.  I think I’ll be safe to cook them at 225 for another 30 minutes – then I’m going to drain the juices from the pan and replace it with my favorite BBQ Sauce recipe.  Here’s what they look like now.

After an additional 30 minutes (3 hrs total, with the first 30 minutes at 350 and the last 2.5 hrs at 225) I pulled half of the thighs out and transferred the rest to a smaller pan and sauced them.

Take a look at the way the unsauced thighs bit!  Only the skin that I bit came with it.  I must say – the skin is about as good as I’ve had and the rub made the chicken taste extrodinary.  Maybe a bit too much thyme – but really good nonetheless.

Here’s a look at the thighs in the pan w/sauce

The sauced ones, in my opinion turned out even better.  The bite was the same, but the flavor profile was a bit more tasty.  I think these could be a winner.

Well….there you have it.  All in all I can say that these are probably the best overall competition quality thighs I have ever cooked.  If I can get the smoker to cook consistently at these temps, the turn out should be even better with real smoke.  I’m glad I did this, because to avoid the mess – I used a pan the entire time.  Had I tried this on the smoker, I would have put them direclty on a grate.  I am 100% convinced that these things stewing in their own juices, rub and the broken down mayo was what made the meat taste so good.

The buttermilk marinade, mayo application and cook temps did something very magical to the skin.  You can see it in the pics above.  Every single piece of chicken turned out exactly the same.  My wife took a piece and with a fork cut off a piece of the thigh to eat…skin and all.  A fork!!!  Cooked low and slow – this is almost unbelievable…but true.

Give it a shot and post your results!