Hot Smoked Chicken

In contrast to the weather we've been having recently, last Sunday was glorious. Instead of a typical roast lunch, it seemed fitting to cook outside and I decided that I'd try to hot smoke a chicken in the barbecue. This is something I'd seen done before, though had never read about, and my reckoning was it couldn't be too tricky; I therefore decided that I didn't need to do any further research on the matter, which would soon transpire to be incorrect. Barbecue lit and left to its own devices as the coals settled, I got the chicken ready in much the same way as I would normally roast a bird. I put half a lemon and half an onion in the cavity, rubbed the whole thing with butter and added some salt and pepper to the skin, thinking that that my first try at doing the hot smoking thing should be carried out with straightforward flavours. When the coals were all white I put the grill on the barbecue, placing the roasting tin on top, shut the lid, crossed my fingers and reckoned on the chicken being ready in an hour and a half. Disappointed by the lack of crispy skin at this point, we soldiered on, carving it anyway. It wasn't, as such, cooked. Not just a touch pink next to the bone, but really quite raw around the whole thigh. Another twenty five minutes did the trick. The skin still didn't crisp up in the way I would have liked it to, though.

The four of us ate it with a potato salad, grilled courgette and hunks of crusty bread to mop up the pan juices. The meat was succulent, with a subtle smoky flavour that really suited a warm afternoon in the sun. That damn skin wasn't crisp, though. This I put down, very obviously, to the barbecue not being hot enough. Now, I'm not sure how i can make my barbecue hotter. It's only a simple charcoal burning thing, and I'm a little unsure how I can make air draw through it more quickly to warm things up. If you have any advice, please leave a comment, and in the meantime, I must ask my friend Chris how he smokes his chickens so beautifully; his having crisp skin to go with that beautiful smoky flavour. All in, neither a success nor a failure; more a learning exercise.