[USA] Smoked chicken thighs

[ssorllih]

Persuing my learning in small batches I cured two chicken thighs with ingredients as a percentage of the total weight.
Salt 1.5
Cure #1 .25
black pepper use your judgement
sugar 2.5
For this pair at 12 ounces total it was half tablespoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of cure #1
and a tablespoon os sugar.
Rubbed the mixture into the meat and put the meat into a zipper freezer bag in the fridge for two days truning and massaging it twice each day. At the end of day 2 I rinsed and dried the meat and set in on a rack to dry in the fridge overnight.

This morning I lit the fire in the smoker using pear wood and lit the gas fire in the grill.

I started at about 130 and after an hour pushed the heat to about 150.
After two hours the fat was starting to render and the IT was 165 so I pulled them out.
They look pretty good and the taste is very pleasing. Nancy says that the smoke is plenty.

[ssorllih]

These turned out so well that I did a dozen more without the skin. Cold smoked over pear wood for about five hours and finished in the kitchen oven. I gave three to a friend to take home and share with his family after I fed him one here. He told Nancy that the other three didn't make it home . We trieded with KC masterpiece BBQ sauce and I will plan them for guests this summer.
Edit to add:
At Nancy's request I reduced the total salt including the cure#1 to 1 % . I still maintain the .25% cure and allow for that when I measure the salt.

[DLFL]

Sure look good!

[el Ducko]

Hey, Ross, how do you keep the temperature that cool? We have a "Char Broil" grill similar to yours in the picture, but ours is gas fired. I take it yours is charcoal-fired? (Looks easy enough to convert.) To cold smoke, what do you do- - - one briquette at a time? I'd appreciate the advice.

[ssorllih]

I use a remote fire chamber.

[ssorllih]

Towards the tail end of this page is an early post of this smoker. http://wedlinydomowe.pl/en/viewtopic.ph ... c&start=45
On the following page there is some further discussion about this.

[HamnCheese]

Hey Ross -

LOVE your smoker - and the thighs look fabulous.

Lynn

[el Ducko]

Please take this as a compliment. That multi-level smoker looks Rube Goldberg enough to really be great! Where do you feed the bowling ball in that rolls down, displacing the smoke upward?

But seriously, folks, the long distance means plenty of time to cool down to ambient temperature, which is just what I need to do a decent job of smoking salmon and sausage. Our home is one-level (our knees aren't what they used to be), so I'll have to slant mine upward, run along the side of the house, go around the back, and stop at the door. (That would be convenient, though.)

...sheer genius! Now, if you could tell me what color bowling ball you recommend...? ...something in a smoky gray or, as we would use at the University of Texas, burnt orange? :hook'em smiley:

What sort of firebox do you use? Looks like chimney liner ceramic pipe stacked on firebrick, but what's the material for the top? ...cement backer-board? ...and the door?

Thanks, as always, for your help. Great idea.

[ssorllih]

Alright Ducky, here it comes! The fire box is indeed a piece of flue liner. I cut a draft in the bottom and saved the cutout. I cemented the cutout to a piece of backer board and the top is also backer board. In this picture I cutout the side for the pipe.
You could set the fire box some distance from the grill and add an elbow to the smoke pipe. With the cover and the draft door I can snuff flames in less than a minute. Most of the time I use a piece glass felt as a gasket on the draft door.
I start the fire with a propane torch and small chips with chunks as large as my fist on top. As soon as I get a good burn going I close the draft door and put the top on. If I have flames I get soot and less smoke.

[el Ducko]

So, do you try to adjust inlet air at all, or just let whatever leakage there is do the job?

...and, when I try to talk Beloved Spouse into letting me do this, do you think I can justify the green sailboat in the background at the same time? Now, THAT would be a miracle!

[ssorllih]

If I am too successful in snuffing the fire I open the draft door a little, but don't walk too far away the fire will flare quickly. There are enough air leaks to transport the smoke.
The little boat is built from two sheets of plywood and a bunch of fiberglass. You can build one in a week.

[ssorllih]

One night several years ago we were sitting around talking about the vertues of various meat. Nancy said ,in praise or chicken,"you can do so many things with chicken". An old friend said,"you can do everything with chicken."
So in pursuit of that goal I went to work on four drumsticks. (big project) .
A quarter teaspoon of salt(1.5 grams) contains 590 milligrams of sodium. A tablespoonful of soy sauce contains 920 millligrams of sodium. Simple math yields that soysauce contains 2.33 grams of salt. This is good to know because for my taste 1 percent salt is just about right in cured and smoked meat. I am coming to it .
I selected four drumsticks total weight 1 pound 4 ounces
or 560 grams
I need .25 per cent cure or 1.4 grams. and I need 5.6 grams of total salt. Two tablespoons of soy sauce is 4.7 grams of salt plus the 1.2 grams of salt in the cure equals 5.9gm total salt. Close enough.
Now I add an eighth teaspoon each of ground ginger, garlic, mustard and celery seed and a quarter teaspoon of crushed pepper corns and one teaspoon of sugar. The whole mess goes into a zipper bag for two days turned and massaged several times. The meat gets rinsed and dried and smoked over pear for four hours and then the fire is started and they get slowly baked to 175 degrees F. This would be exceptional with chicken wings with the addition of some red peppers.