APPLE SMOKED CHICKEN

Last year  my wife and I decided to raise a few chickens of our own. Well to make a more honest statement, we purchased a dozen and added them to the several dozen that my parents already had. "When you have that many what's another dozen." Since they were meat chickens they grew fast and slaughtered at about 3 months. They were all nicely butchered, packaged and stored in the freezer. The freezer filled up pretty quickly with a dozen chickens, some salmon, and venison.

Recently I decided to smoke the chicken thigh quarters and chicken wings using different recipes. For the thighs I used Myron Mixon's Basic Chicken Rub recipe and simple marinade he uses which includes chicken stock and ranch dry dressing mix. For the wings I used a recipe from a blog called smokedngrilled. The wings marinade recipe called for Worcestershire sauce, water, garlic salt, minced onions, and lemon pepper.

Both were marinaded overnight and cooked at the same smoker temperature of 220 degrees Fahrenheit. I also used a simple rub of raw brown sugar, kosher salt, onion powder, and garlic powder.  I had a meat thermometer in a chicken thigh for accurate temperature readings. Both the wings and thighs cooked for about 2.5 hrs until the internal temperature of 165 degrees was reached.

The thighs tasted much better than the wings. Since purchasing Myron Mixon's BBQ/Smoking Meat Book over a year ago I have not been disappointed in any of the recipes that I used for my meats.

On the other hand the wings had a strong Worcestershire sauce taste which was not the best thing to taste in the wings. Before I smoked the wings, my research indicated that the skin on the wings becomes tough when smoked and that is exactly what happened. So removing the skin before eating and pouring some Dinosaur BBQ sauce solved the problem.