Any help or suggestions you can lend would be greatly appreciated. Brine recipe, time in brine (hours/days) maybe comments on your end results.
First thought....listen to anything Iammadman has to say
I've been trying to nail down a solid BBQ chicken approach and I too have been dabbling with variations in method/approach/recipe. In no particular order, here are my thoughts based entirely on experience and what I've been told.
Several professional chefs have told me that in order to make moist chicken, you MUST brine. I've found this to be true for breast meat but not dark meat. Breast and thigh are both 'chicken' but the meats are fairly different. Because EVERYTHING in the world can be explained using brisket analogy I'd say thigh meat is like the point and breast meat is the flat...and ain't the flat always the challenge?
I've been using Oakridge Game Changer with good results....but, as much as I hate to say this, the process of brining does seem to induce more sodium into the picture, even if you do a post-brine fresh water bath to pull excessive salt off the outer meat. I've had chicken that didn't taste overly salty and I've woken up from sleep at 3am to a parched mouth gasping for water. IMO, you gotta choose how much you wanna rock people's taste buds against their sodium intake. But make no mistake, a brine will prompt the protein to absorb more water and bring flavor into the meat. If you're only doing thighs, you can pass...but trying to make good breast meat without brining...yeah, good luck with that.
Injection? Nah...the holes you make to inject in seem to let juices flow out while cooking...I don't track mark birds
Spatchcocking...DEFINITELY good, more even cooking and looks cool/professional. A must for turkey too!
Cooking on a grill...doesn't capture that true 'pit smoked' flavor. Cooking on a smoker can be overpowering and lacks the grill flavor that comes from the maillard reaction. Gotta get both!
Getting right to it...my top approach:
I remove the skin and do a reduced sodium brine overnight
Rinse, pat dry, apply low-sodium rub
Place chicken in vac-bag along with 1/2-cup BBQ sauce, seal (this can sit in frig for a while too)
Sous Vide (water bath) at 155F for 2 hours
Smoke at 225F for an hour until golden brown
remove from smoker, lightly coat with oil
heat grill to med-hot
place pieces on grill for one minute, rotate 90-degrees for 30 seconds, get your X marks
Flip to other side for one minute, rotate for 30 seconds to finish other side
baste with favorite BBQ sauce on each piece and move to upper rack, lower heat or even back to smoker
There it is...very moist, very flavorful, true pit-smoked flavor, grill marks with that grilled sizzle taste
Brine, Sous vide, smoke & grill 4-stage process :doh: Remove a step and it's a compromise. The brine makes it a wee bit better but the water bath does an excellent job of cooking the meat without losing much fat. Still, to get that flavor deeper into the meat, the brine seems essential.
Last thought, make sure it's quality meat. I know a few butchers who'll admit that when meat starts to smell bad, they'll soak it in water/bleach, rinse and repackage it. Beyond that they'll apply seasoning rub and sell it as pre-seasoned. Point being, you can't make a quality result from mediocre stock. There is no substitute for quality.